Laser "stacker"

Didn’t know if folks had seen this story about this laser stacker, which is a mod to a laser cutter that you load multiple sheets of acrylic in and it cuts and welds into a single object. @dan is something that the GF could do with variable focus (i.e. is this a hardware feature or a software feature)?

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Wow, that is a really cool laser application. Definitely going to try this!

Yes. This is a neat technique and a good article. Here’s a cross-link to the topic in another thread, including links to the research paper. This one was a Hackaday article.

The only thing from the GF literature that gets in the way, is the depth of cut. As long as you can cut, then go over the same place and cut deeper, then I don’t see why not

focus depth might get in the way here

You mean that the variable focus can’t focus that deep?

Wish I had a way to just merge this thread into the other one. At this point each is roughly the same length, but the comment I made in the other is exactly an answer to your question:

Continuing the discussion from Another really interesting laser related link from Hackaday:

The article didn’t discuss specifics, so still no idea exactly how far they move to defocus. But reducing power and/or increasing speed and doing a few passes could work as well. Since what they do for a healing cut is make a small cut off to the side, then heat the free standing segment so that it bridges across the two cuts.

the laser has a 1/2" focus depth. so anything outside that will either be stopped by the software or will just have healing powers

The healing requires a cut, then a defocused pass. So outside of the 1/2" depth, you cannot even do heals (not that there would be anything to heal at that point).

However, it may be possible to use the defocused at depth concept to fuse layers together. So you run 3 layers on the normal honeycomb height, then you swap to something 3mm shorter, place a new 3 layers on top of the previous 3, and fuse the bottom new layer to the top old layer. Run the new set of 3, repeat.

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thats what I was, saying, just being lazy =P