HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ TheSpiceIsLife

Neat! The confluence of skills to dream up, model, cut, and build a musical instrument is pretty cool!

My full time job is operating a 4kW 1070nm fibre laser setup for cutting metals, mostly steel; stainless steel; aluminium here in Launceston, Tasmania.

Unfortunately the supplier advised us not to cut timber / particle board due to the potential of an ember reaching the fume extractor which contains regular cardboard type air filters. Oddly enough, last year I reached out to some other laser cutters locally and one mentioned their laser was down due to a fire in the fume extractor!

⬐ proee

What types of applications are you using the laser cutter for?

⬐ TheSpiceIsLife

Predominantly structural steel, marine (we also build boats), agricultural, architectural, and art.

I’m a huge proponent of working with local artists, we’ve helped with some pretty cool metal sculpture and installation art.

Ping me if you’d like to see some photos / video, contact details in my profile :)

⬐ antt

That seems like a very small town, is there enough demand for the machine?

Are there any good resources on how fiber lasers work? I have a co2 laser 200W that's pretty good for all things non-metal and would be interested in getting a fiber one, alignment seems like a breeze, but the prices for the fiber lasers start at $100k or so.

⬐ TheSpiceIsLife

I moved here 5 years ago due to other life factors conspiring to bring me here. I had no idea Launceston is a little manufacturing powerhouse. The city is growing and there appears to be a lot of opportunities in the arts, manufacturing, technology, there’s even a bit of software development fling on here. Plus a bit of skiing an hour away. I’ve met a lot of great people here an occasionally get to laser cut art.

Without going in to too much detail, yes there’s a lot of demand for machine time.

I haven’t really looked at smaller machines, ours was in the vicinity of 1MM.

I would have thought a lower power laser diode module, and associated optics would be available at a reasonable price by now.