Talk:New print technology: Laser Burning

About laser processing
That's "processing by use of laser beam", of course.

The laser beam must be focussed on the workpiece (in this case, paper). It will come out of the laser diode in some kind of pattern, probably diverging. Think flashlight, not sci-fi laser beam. You probably need at least one lens (think "magnifying glass") to converge the beam. Since the beam is not a constant diameter, you need to keep a constant distance from the laser to the paper. Well, of course there are various approaches to avoid that issue, but anyway it isn't totally simple.

You could scan, but - hmm do we have a place to post graphics? We'll need to post some calculations and sketches.

Backing up several steps: you need to control the beam intensity at the paper surface and the time it stays on any one area of the paper. That will control the intensity of the mark.

Bear in mind, (in the US) laser systems and manufacturers of laser systems are regulated by the CDRH, which is part of the FDA. AFAIK, you can build lots of silly things for yourself. But, if you build for others, you are a manufacturer, and certain rules apply.

68.164.119.71 19:59, June 2, 2010 (UTC) Jay Maechtlen

My Thoughts on this
I think that instead of incredebly expensive DLP chips you could use a polygon mirror with a encoder

to determine the angle of the laser beam and just control the power to the laser really fast, this is a much cheaper approach...?

Lets say you use a really slow 8-sided polygon mirror (1krpm), then you would make 8k passes of the page per min,

wich is 133 passes per sec, to print at 9600 dpi you would need to control the power with a frequency around 400khz,

if we want to PWM modulate this we need to go to about 4-8mhz to get a ok stepping wich is not impossible at all to do at home.

If we have a laser powerful enough (1w 808nm maybe, these diodes sell for about 20$ and you just add a case and optic for 10$)

we would be able to print a page at 300 dpi with a good tonal range in about 25 seconds from start to finish

Laser Contaniment is absolutely a thing to think about, we do not want anyone to get hurt.

To adress the questions in the post below, i think it would work fine on both non-white and recykled paper,

what would not work is coated inkjet papers that have a plastic surface or things like that.

Smell is a question, but i think a charcoal filter on outlet would be enough to handle it.

In my opinion, heat management would not be a problem if we let the paper move on a aluminum bed that draws heat away.

83.226.123.127 05:56, March 30, 2010 (UTC) // Meduza

wouldn't smell become an issue after a while ? ( add charcoal filters ? ) what about non white or recycled paper ?

one of the biggest problems with this idea is that DLP chips are incredibly expensive, and probably a little over the top for this particular application.

65.190.197.18 05:45, February 6, 2010 (UTC)

I like this idea
I like this idea, a lot. We'll need some testing to see which papers are most responsive to this technique.

LASER containment is one concern; not everyone is expert enough even to find correct protective eyeware.

Heat management may also become an issue; how can we assure a tightly controlled burn?

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2006/11/how_to_make_a_dvd_burner.html

doesn't seem to need much cooling.

The laser diode itself doesn't need much cooling, in worst case we can use metal barrels to feed the paper,

which would also take the heat off the paper.

look at current commercial laser-to-substrate products.
The Océ LightJet uses a three (RGB) lasers and a spinning mirror to expose photopaper. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LightJet for a more detailed explanation. It is very effective and can be simplified considerably of only one lasers is used.