New Laser Cutter

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Nottingham Hackspace had a bit of a whip round at the start of December with the intention of building their own laser cutter to replace their HPC3020 laser cutter. The initial plan was to recreate the basic design from the buildlog website. The pledge pot quickly reached £1000 and some stretch goals were created, within 48 hours the total was up to £2K and the intention is now to build an 80W laser with an 800x450mm cutting area (nearly twice as big as my current machine, twice as powerful but for half the price).

The closest design on the buildlog website (or at least the best documented) is this machine by iGull. We intend to copy that design but adding additional features for our specific requirements. Stay tuned as I intend to blog as much of this build as possible and if the control system works out I intend to replace the innards on my own laser to match the design so there is potentially quite a lot invested in this new design. Information about the build can also be found on the nottinghack wiki

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