One of the fun parts when i lived in the bay area was that as companies got acquired, they didn't know what to do with the stuff they had before acquisition that isn't needed anymore, and it either sits in a warehouse, or gets auctioned off (or both!)
So for example, at one point, Google (after acquiring terra bella and some other companies) had like 5 or 6 very nice 5 axis VMC's sitting around collecting dust. Each was worth well over 250k. They already had plenty of VMC's in the machine shop, etc, and didn't need these, and it was not worth the trouble to sell them. At least back then.
In my case, I was able to get this welder for way less than half price.
The lightweld's have come down in price over the years, and that will keep happening.
They are pretty much the most expensive laser welders though, you can easily get one for 10k these days.
The truth is, however, if you go cheaper than this, what often what gets overlooked is safety. So some of them in the lowest price range don't even require you touch the gun to metal before letting you fire, etc.
All of them can weld the same, so if you go looking, look at other things too.
THe other thing - one of the nice things about laser welding is that it's improving very fast. So similar to fiber, running multiple types of lasers or optics in the cable is not particularly more difficult than running one. They just add more fibers (it's not quite the only issue, but you get the point).
Why does this matter? Because it means you can run another laser or something to monitor the weld and adjust parameters on the fly. Which lightweld and others are starting to do. So if you are moving the gun too fast/slowly, or got the power wrong or whatever, it will compensate automatically
This probably won't ever happen on mig/tig. The lasers are heavily computer controlled already, this just adds a feedback loop.
It also enables real time certification of a weld - see https://www.ipgphotonics.com/products/laser-weld-measurement for an example (this is a separate product, but you get the idea)
In any case, my take would be - if you want to play with them as a hobbyist, or have too much money, they are cool Otherwise i'd wait ~5 years and what you get will probably be 5-10x better for the same price.
PSWAATY == Please Say What the Acronyms Are. Thank You.
It's also pretty easy to figure out what you're talking about from context.
I'm keeping that one.
So now I have to know why Google has a machine shop. Beyond the obvious "why not?"
Just from the top of my head: waymo develops their own lidars, akamai obviously needed a ton of machining for the kite, project loon probably had machined components. And those are just the flashy examples we heard about outside of the company. They can have ton of other projects which didn’t get to the point where we heard about them but required hardware prototyping.
I think Google and I only think search/ads. I forgot Alphabet has all that other stuff going on.
I'm not saying that Google has machine shops purely for burning man. But I strongly suggest that when the idea has been floated in various locations, one recurring theme is "yeah let's! And let's get some lasers and propane burners!", and I also believe that some managers were thinking "great, this is the culture we want."
The register calls it "the chocolate factory" as a reference to Willy Wonka. Shame they descended into evil.
> I'm not saying that Google has machine shops purely for burning man. But I strongly suggest that when the idea has been floated in various locations, one recurring theme is "yeah let's! And let's get some lasers and propane burners!", and I also believe that some managers were thinking "great, this is the culture we want."
There was! It was the predecessor to the Garage. I suspect because the machine shop boys wouldn’t let them use the real toys.
Are you able to attach them to the heads of sharks?
https://www.britannica.com/story/do-sharks-really-die-if-the...
Darn, we were trying to get a mill for the NYC office's makerspace. It was probably a safety issue and not a parts procurement issue, though.
Still, some of those little tracked tractors on TikTok are interesting. If I could somehow raise enough money to start importing them, I'm sure I could sell quite a few.
I'm black, but my wife did anoint me to the position of "honorary redneck" some time ago. Neighbor has stopped with the drone overflights of my property, but still, you're giving me ideas...
This is why we can't have nice things
This guy set ablaze the inside of a vehicle through closed windows from a significant distance.
I was mistaken: Reason was a railgun.
The materials cost is really not very high (no idea on the laser itself, but the rest is easily <1k. Probably <500.). The R&D cost was probably very high to start (but also coming down).
My gut says they'll be for sale at $2-5k within 2 years at the rate things are going.
For others:
The NOHD is really a nominal distance. It's just the distance at which the beam falls below the maximum permissible exposure.
The 50% eye hazard distance (ED50) is 31.6% of this number. That is, if the NOHD is 100m, then at 31.6 meters you have a 50% chance of causing a medically detectable change to the eye. It's also worth noting - the beam power at this 31.6% distance is 10x, not 3x, what it is at the NOHD.
For laser welding, the spot beam is small (60um) which is one reason the NOHD distance is so high.
For reference, a laser pointer is like 1.5mm, so this is 25x smaller.
It also doesn't help that the lasers used are all ~1060-1070nm wavelength and so invisible as well :)
that's how a lot of good stories start
Just like the electric cables for your water kettle typically don't get hot.
This type of laser carries so much energy that even a tiny fraction of a percent absorption will add up quickly, hence the propensity for injury.
2.5 kilowatts. It's called 2.5 kilowatts.
‹calms down›
2.5 kilowatts is how much power a tea kettle in the UK draws. It's an insane amount of power to pump into a 60 micron point.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity_by_country#T...
Continental Europe uses 16A radial circuits so the current rating is higher there.
EDIT: Of course, you can't run two kettles on one radial, but you can on one ring.
You have 240 V at the panel, but you only run half for each common circuit.
Here in Singapore I think our pool pump uses three phase power, too. (Our plugs and outlets here in Singapore follow the British model.)
t = specific heat capacity of water * mass of water * degC deltaT / power
4.186 J/gC 1000g * 80C / 1800 J/s ~= 186 seconds
South african plugs are rated 16A @240V. Thats a safe 3.5kW at each and every plug socket in the house.
Brazil is also an exception. The standard socket is only 10A (with a 20A alternative for things like air conditioners), and the voltages vary depending on the city (and the building, and location within the building); you might have 110V, 115V, 127V, 220V, 230V, and perhaps others I have missed (I went in more detail about it at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40385851). I live in a 127V/220V area, so my single-phase sockets are 10A @ 127V, for a total of only 1.3kW each.
But mixing 100s of volts with 200s of volts sounds mad. I presume you had the special plug for your 200 range outlets? Does Brazil also have split phase AC like the US?
The same type of socket is used for "110V" (usually 127V) and "220V", sometimes in the same building, sometimes right next to each other. The "220V" socket might be colored red, or might have a sticker saying "220V" glued next to it, but don't count on it. The only difference is between the 10A and the 20A, the pins on the 20A plug are slightly thicker and don't fit in the 10A socket (the opposite works fine).
But at least, it's better than a couple of decades ago: on top of all that, back then we didn't even have a plug and socket standard. It was a mix of several types, including a "universal" socket which looked like the common USA socket but could also accept plugs with round pins, and all of them (including the USA standard sockets) could be used for both "110V" and "220V". The new plug and socket standard is great; it's better than the USA standard, since a partially pushed plug won't expose live pins (and it's also slightly smaller, allowing for denser power strips). It's unfortunate that they didn't also modify the European standard they used as a base to add keying for the different voltages (while allowing a universal plug for things which can work on both voltages), but I understand that trying to do too much could make it politically unfeasible to mandate the new standard.
> Does Brazil also have split phase AC like the US?
It's more common to have three-phase AC (that is, between phase and neutral is 127V and between a pair of phases is 220V), but we also have some places with split phase (for instance, 110V between phase and neutral and 220V between a pair of phases).
Over here in NZ we get pretty similar ratings on the same style heaters, but the large room ones are 2400kW because we can get that from any socket.
Also with my hobby - sewing. A lot of people in North America talk about forgetting they left the iron on, but I switch it on and off every time because it heats up in 30 seconds - less if it’s been on recently.
That's eg common for electric stoves in your kitchen.
Doesn't your microwave heat a cup of water in about the same amount of time as a tea kettle? And most tea kettles are bigger than one cup.
Now, think about concentrating the same amount of energy to heat up your eyeball. Or worse, concentrated into a tiny point on your eyeball.
... but then i checked my eastern european kettle and guess what, it's ... 2.4 kW.
tl;dw -- kettles in the U.S. only take about 4+ minutes to boil a liter of water. So when you say "now" you really mean it.
- Amount of water
- Initial temperature of water
- Position of water container
They also prevent superheated water accidents.
Plus, when you reduce the heat the heat reduces almost immediately.
Nothing else compares with the speed it works that I've ever used before. Definitely worth the upgrade in time saved at the stove.
You can improve that by using less water, but I would still like to double the power.
(I use mine mostly on the 90W or 180W settings, for defrosting.)
Almost all household appliances that heat (and specifically heat food or water) will operate at the limit of what your house can supply.
So that's about 1800 Watt in the US and about 3500 Watt in most of the rest of the world.
It's only natural that you see almost any (heating) appliance cluster around these numbers.
(I'm actually not quite sure where you would see 2500 Watt kettles. Perhaps some are deliberately neutered a bit, so that you don't blow a fuse in case you have anything else on that circuit?
Keep in mind that in the UK, but not in eg France or Germany, every plug also has its own fuse.)
Here in the UK, my home brew beer set up has a 3000w option - great for boiling 25 litres of water/wort - that said it came with a EU plug with some sort of 'fancy' UK plug convertor. After about 4 years the plug started to get so hot that it melted a socket or two - I found that inside the convertor the connection between the EU plug and the UK was really thin, which was causing it to heat up.
I cut off the end of the cable and rewired it to a heavy duty UK plug - it has been perfect since then - and no longer over heats.
Yes, but you still see electric space heaters. And they essentially all also have the same wattage: the limit of what they can get.
Wh? It’s definitely less hassle, and maybe faster, to fill a cup/mug and stick that in the microwave
Than it is to fill a cup, pour that into the kettle, boil it, then pour it back in the cup. Or you have to put more water into the kettle than you need, because you can’t measure it accurateLet, and then it takes longer to boil
60 micrometres. "micron" is a deprecated irregular word that is unlike every other scaling of the metre.
A lot of this comes down to wavelength. Some wavelengths get focused by one’s eye and can concentrate their power in a small spot on the retina. Other wavelengths will be absorbed before they get to the retina and will therefore deposit their power over a larger area and in less sensitive tissue.
It can also make a difference if the light is pulsed.
If you can't do this, you do need to panel or curtain the ceiling or use laser absorption coating or other things.
There are places that also just use reflection sensors that detect reflection on the ceiling and trigger (again, machines already support handling this). I have heard this works very well but have no direct experience with it.
All that said, reflection off ceiling is more uncommon for practical reasons (The angle at which you hold the gun to the piece, the fact that ceiling directed angles often become back reflection into the gun which it already detects, etc).
They already detect very high reflection as well.
For a makerspace, one of the issues you will have is that people will likely want to try to weld copper and aluminum a lot, both of which are highly IR reflective.
If you said "You can only weld steel and iron" you would eliminate a very high percent of reflection in the first place.
Here's a basic chart that looks right: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tomasz-Kurzynowski/publ...
For a 1064nm laser, you can see Al or Cu is going to reflect a lot of the energy, while steel/iron are still off the graph high in absorption
Agree with the post above, though. The safety setup for lasers is basically full isolation.
Here's a figure showing the quite stark difference. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/SEM-image-of-the-substra...
Thanks heaps. :)
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/SEM-image-of-the-substra...
-coming from another hacker space
You absolutely, absolutely need this. Do not take chances. "Real estate is expensive" is not an excuse for a blinding hazard to members and visitors of your space.
I've worked with very high powered room-sized laser cutters before and they should all have a full room enclosure.
Hope this helps!
It was red for a second but now what appears to be a black hole is consuming everything.
For a very wide range of laser powers (not 2.5kW), the trouble is in guaranteeing a diffuse reflection.
That is the only way to not blind your membership.
There were lots of mirrors and prisms and they has to calculate refraction off of them and stick carbon blocks everywhere that light transmission was less than 100% efficient so that no light could escape the system except via the target.
Because it's a 2500 watt laser, if i didn't have laser safety curtains , the relections/etc could very easily blind someone at a fairly long distance.
The NOHD is something like 10km (2500 watt laser, 0.06mm spot size, divergence is very very small). The actual hazard distance is shorter, but still, kinda crazy.
(as for why i have a laser welder - i got it cheap and besides the downsides above, it is very easy to weld ~anything without much skill. A person who has never welded in their life can weld sheet metal and have it come out basically perfect in 5 minutes)