I support the “webcam” part of this idea, but don’t support the “lasers will damage your eyes” part of this.
I’ve done exactly that every time I’ve used the laser. Most of the time I’m holding the CO2 bottle at the same time.
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The fire wasn’t in the material bay. It was by the tube in the back. Someone standing there would and did see it. A camera in the bay would’ve seen nothing. The rule exists for a reason.
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Then let’s rephrase it to “DO NOT leave the laser UNATTENDED” while in use or something.
I think phrasing it like that makes way more sense. As for our wiki, maybe consider using http://wiki.makespace.org/Equipment/Laser_Cutter as a guide on what to write. Their Wiki has some really good tips on there.
James Wilson,
You can tell people to not look directly at the sun as it damages your eyes all you want, but you will have idiots continuing to do so because someone told them they could. For my profession, I cannot afford to damage my eyes and I will not trigger you more in explaining why.
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If you believe the laser cutter covers aren’t safe by all means bring your concern to the attention of the laser committee. And/or buy some laser-safety glasses.
Totally agree and will do that without hesitation. This should be just cause for . Leaving a laser cutter unattended is not defensible. Except by my son at 10 years old when I told him not to come out of his room until I said he could. Then the defense would be something like, “What if someone shows up and forces me to leave area at gunpoint?” But other than THAT, it is indefensible.
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I bring my laptop with me and do production file tweaks on it rather than the laser workstation. Laptop → USB or Google drive → laser workstation. I’m using AutoCAD so I can’t reasonably use the laser workstations fort this anyway. Not everyone has a laptop, but a large percentage of us do.
I endeavor to have my design down solid before I even show up at the laser. If I find I need to make appreciable changes and someone looks to be waiting, I’m apt to log out and let them use it.
And yeah, watch the laser reasonably closely during cutting. I can’t stand to stare at the cut continuously myself - the light is rather intense and a bit painful to watch - but monitor for signs of fire or malfunction.
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This was such an EXCELLENT statement that it deserves repeating and emphasizing.
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I appreciate the affirmation, but I’d like to think this is - or becomes - the norm.
Heck, I’ve had some interesting, unexpected conversations with people I’ve never seen before doing this sort of thing. It’s not beneficial to a production mindset, but most of us are hobbyists.
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While I tend to be a pessimist where people are concerned, I suspect that your correct. Indeed you may even represent 90-95% of our members. Sadly that still would mean that 80-160 are selfish…
False. Fsl laser also counted move time, lasersaur had a timer implemented by a member but has not been reproduced for any of the other machines so we don’t have another option.
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I thought the timer was transplanted to the Lasersaur from the Full Spectrum, but maybe it was never installed on the Full Spectrum?
I remember a user made timer being installed and working on the FSL. Don’t know what it timed.
It died pretty quickly and we had to revert back to measuring the movement. Again it was implemented and never put into action for the other machines. It’s not like laser is trying to price gouge by counting that way.
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Even movement is wear and tear on the laser.
Dang, 160% is REALLY pessimistic. 
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He’s saying 80-160 people, not percent. 5-10% of our ~1600 membership.
I was the one who drove that timer -
it simply counted time that the firing signal enabled the beam to be on.
I recall it was a bit more accurate for the FSL laser than the LaserSaur, due to the way the machines worked differently… I never got deep enough into it to properly handle the higher duty cycle of the LaserSaur…
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Ok lets re-focus here. I looked at this PC the other night thats hooked to the Thunder Laser. It has an Nvidia Graphics card, 16GB of ram and a 4 core Hyperthread CPU. Frankly i’d gotten tired of reading this thread and figured i could ascertain what really needs to happen.
For what this machine is doing it is slow to log in and a few other things but to my eye even running the basic programs that are installed, illustrator, RD works, etc. This is enough horsepower to get it done.
Now why is it so slow opening programs and logging in? Someone in team infrastructure should take a look at this. The CPU, Ram and Graphics card arent maxed out, in fact they’re nearly idle. That leads me to suspect a hard disk slowness issue or some other filter (like how anti viruses work) on the system slowing things down.
This PC just needs some tech support love and it would be fine…
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We replaced the graphics card with the Nvidia card via a donation from Kim. It had a garbage card. Everything seems to be better now. We can probably close this thread @John_Marlow
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