For the last ten to fifteen years, optical drives have been fading out of existence. There’s little reason to have them around anymore unless you are serious about archiving data or unconvinced that streaming platforms will always be around. While there are some niche uses for them still, we’re seeing more and more get repurposed for parts and other projects like this laser engraver which uses not only the laser from a DVD drive, but plenty of other parts as well.

The build starts with a couple optical drives, both of which are dismantled. One of the shells is saved to use as a base for the engraver, and two support structures are made out of particle board and acrylic to hold the laser and the Y axis mechanism. Both axes are made from the carriages of the disassembled hard drives, with the X axis set into the base to move the work piece. One of the lasers from the scavenged DVD drives is fitted to the Y axis with a new heat sink, and with an Arduino set up to interpret gcode the device is on its way to engraving any material that will fit into its diminutive frame.

While the build repurposes almost all of the parts from the optical drives, it does stop short of using the drive motors in favor of A4988 stepper motors. It’s also not quite powerful enough to engrave wood, but other materials like leather are right in this machine’s sweet spot. If you have plenty of drives on hand with nothing else for them to do, there’s plenty more they can be used for. This scanning laser microscope is among the more interesting builds we’ve seen.

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Recently the famous site evilmadscientist introduced the new art robot called Axidraw.I saw the robot in action and it is very similar to the robot I built in the 2015, called Cartesio, a 3d printed cartesian robot.

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Using a 3d printer means playing with some hardware but especially some softwares. In the tutorial of this week, the fourth tutorial of our series , Kris is going to introduce you how to work with Slic3r, a G-Code generator for 3d printers and basically a tool you need to convert a digital 3D model into printing instructions for your 3D printer. Slic3r is an open source software able to cut the model into horizontal slices (layers), generates toolpaths to fill them and calculates the amount of material to be extruded so that you can reach good results.

The object you’ll be able to print with your Materia 101 is a pirate hook !

Follow the 12 steps on Scuola and print yours >>

Check the previous tutorials on 3d printing with Material 101

Interested in getting in touch and showing your experiments? Join Kristoffer on the Arduino forum dedicated to Materia 101 and give us your feedback.

As mentioned in my blog, "Multipurpose Mini Machine" DAGU wants to develop a low cost CNC machine kit. The models shown here will not be the final product, they are simply what I used for testing the quality of the components.

Part of the kit will be an Arduino compatible controller. Ok, I know, nothing new so far.

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There are plenty of drawbot projects out there, many of which come with their own special software in tow. While some of these packages are easier to use than others, [Dan Royer] is pretty sure he can do it better.

Looking for a fun and engaging way to teach STEM subjects in schools across the country, [Dan] developed a relatively simple drawbot which can be constructed by a wide range of age groups. While he is trying to get schools to purchase his robot kits, we’re guessing that our readers would be more inclined to build their own.

So what does [Dan] have to offer that might interest you? Well, he says he has developed some drawbot software that’s pretty darn easy to use. Rather than multiple applications generating machine-specific code, his software will transform your picture into a line drawing in one easy step. The app uses a traveling-salesman algorithm to generate drawings with nary a crossed line in sight before outputting the resultant machine instructions in easy-to-use GCode.

We don’t have a drawbot of our own handy to test his software out, so if you do happen to give it a shot, let us know how it worked for you in the comments.

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Knowing the length of each string and the distance between the servos gives us everything we need to use trigonometry to find the XY coordinates of the pen.  We can also do the reverse, which means we can find how much to change the strings to move from A to B. From there I added gcode support.  Lastly I wrote some Java apps to create a nice GUI.  If your arduino comes with the firmware already loaded then you don't even need to install the Arduino app. :)

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