As I’ve been dabbling in the mad sciences recently, I thought I’d get some more toys.
This culminated in the purchase of a laser engraver.

This is it sitting next to another interesting toy I own – a CNC. He who dies with the most toys wins dontcha know 🙂

The engraver came with some exceedingly shite Chinese software (Moshi Engraver), but I did know that, and had ordered a cnc controller board with the idea of retrofitting that in. (its actually in the photo above funnily enough)

It has sat in the office mildly unused, but still in my thoughts.

One of my clients finally asked what was that large orange thing upstairs, and I dragged it out and setup for them to show off some test paper cuts.

Tomorrow will take a closer look at working out the pinouts as I didn’t get very far today in getting EMC2 talking nicely to to the Y axis (which was the goal for tonight).

Long term will be interested in making it work as a printer driven hardware device, but for now EMC2 is good enough.
http://www.laoslaser.org/ is making interesting progress in that regard, and I might look at talking directly to the Engraver factory about integrating and making a few with a few to selling a *decent* version.

As this will be a work in progress, here are the links that will be useful.
Some need a vee pee en to view in China sadly.

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/laser_engraving_cutting_machines/138554-cheap_laser_cutter_modifications.html
http://www.thinkhaus.org/2010/06/19/howto-turn-a-cheap-chinese-laser-engraver-into-a-pretty-good-laser-cutter/
http://www.stephenhobley.com/blog/2011/04/15/upgrading-a-laser-cutter-from-china/
http://www.andyslater.com/laser-cutting/cnc-conversion.html
http://dank.bengler.no/-/page/show/5473_connectinggrbl
http://www.synthfool.com/laser/
http://www.laoslaser.org/

As I’ve been doing a bit more hardware stuff recently, I thought I’d get some more tools.

Yes, Taobao is wonderful 🙂

I already have a scope – the eminently hackable Rigol DS1052e 50mhz (now running at 100mhz cough).
I already have a bench PSU.
I also have a JTAG device (although its a chinese clone, but hey, it works).
… and I also have a whole bunch of ttl -> rs232 adaptors (as they fry when you’re not careful).
I also have a 3d printer 🙂
I also have a few Arduino bits and bobs, as well as some much more capable ARM dev kits (which I prefer).

What more could I want?

Well, a bus-pirate – but Seeeeeeeeeeed studio still haven’t gotten their sh*t together, and I can’t seem to order from them.
Grumble. Tried again today, but my credit card is rejected as usual. Works on every other site, but theirs..
Still, whilst checking out Seeed Studio’s blog I noted that they mentioned Shanghai (finally!).

Apparently, there’s a hardware hacker dev lab *right* by where I used to live.
They’re up on 50 Yong Jia Lu / website is – http://xinchejian.com/.
I still can’t believe I hadn’t heard about them.

Also slightly annoyed that I missed the last few open days they had.

Going to have to go visit after CNY, and make some friends there 🙂

Lawrence.