Here’s another gem for the hardware lovers to hack during a devthon. SilverJimny, from instructables, has gone on to create a tiny microcontroller-driven laser cutter using an Arduino UNO, a laser diode, drive and a few wires.

In this project called a Microslice, SilverJimny used a larger 50W CO2 laser cutter to carve out pieces for the smaller one but this can also be fabricate using a lathe machine.

The inspiration comes from Gantry cranes which is used in ports for hoisting and lifting heavy containers in parallel movement. The cutting head along with the X-axis is a unit that moves on the Y-axis to cut anything that is on the cutting table.

The Instructable consists of more details with the source code. The video of how it works is below.

[via Instructables]

Originally Published on October 28, 2013