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Toys Hardware

More on the Versalaser 236

Posted by michael from the keep-remaining-fingers-out-of-the-machine dept.
A random reader writes: "In an article at PCMag.com, Bill Machrone describes what has to be the coolest printer ever (or close to it). A company called Versalaser sells a printer which uses a laser and can cut/write on everything from paper to wood to stone. Available in 25-50 Watt models, starting at only US$10,000. Great for the geek who must have it all! Unfortunately, Windows drivers only at this time." We mentioned this wondertool before.
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More on the Versalaser More

More on the Versalaser

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  • AHA! (Score:5, Funny)

    by wizarddc ( 105860 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @03:14PM (#7294415) Homepage Journal
    So this is a self admitted repost, huh?! You doubly lazy slashdot editors.

  • What, no pictures????? (Score:3)

    by numbski ( 515011 ) * <numbskiNO@SPAMhksilver.net> on Thursday October 23, 2003 @03:15PM (#7294431) Homepage Journal
    I'm heartbroken here.

    You go getting my hopes up like, and then you don't even show me some pictures????

    *faints*

  • Glass laser printers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Trillan ( 597339 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @03:16PM (#7294446) Homepage Journal
    Far cooler are glass (or is it crystal?) laser printers. I haven't seen them, but a coworker was telling me about seeing them at a big mall somewhere in Sacremento. You get modeled by a scan, then it curs your image into a block of glass -- in 3d.
    • I saw one at Pier 39 in San Francisco last year. I had my face modeled as well.

      The face is lasered in 3d inside the crystal. Very Cool.

      Here's the company involved [crystalixo...fornia.com].

      The store's name was Crystalix.
      -Cyc

    • Re:Glass laser printers (Score:5, Informative)

      by bravehamster ( 44836 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @03:37PM (#7294691) Homepage Journal
      I bought something from one of these in Plano, Texas. (My mom just graduated from law school, and I bought her the scales of justice inside a crystal block.) Very, very cool to watch it done. From the way the guy running it explained it, it works by using two lasers. When the two lasers intersect, it gets hot enough to create a small fracture in the crystal at the exact point of intersection. From there it's pretty easy to see how it gets done, although the fractures do have to be done in a certain order, otherwise the previous fractures will difract the lasers.

      • From the way the guy running it explained it, it works by using two lasers. When the two lasers intersect, it gets hot enough to create a small fracture in the crystal at the exact point of intersection.

        Hrm. I wonder if you could get a transparent block that fluoresces where the lasers intersect. Then you'd be able to create moving 3D pictures with proper depth instead of the fake depth from bi-optical 3D screens.

    • 3D printers / rapid prototyping systems are even cooler than that. Make anything you like (within the size limits of the printer). Check out Z Corp's [zcorp.com] printers (or a BBC news article [bbc.co.uk]).

  • Tattoos anyone? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This could quite possibly be the most painful way to get that tattoo you have always wanted. Comes with free prescription of percacet.

  • It had to be said... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cyclopedian ( 163375 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @03:18PM (#7294469) Journal
    I want sharks with fricken Veralaser printers on their heads!!

    Throw me a bone here, people!

    -Cyc

    • Re:It had to be said... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Every time you're thinking "it has to be said," keep in mind that it probably already has been.

    • Re:It had to be said... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Here is a guide to getting +5 funny on slashdot stories. The humour of the slashdot crowd is pretty sophisticated but with this guide you should just be able to stay in touch.

      1. The phrase 'I want sharks with fricken [insert story related term] on their heads', will never become unfunny no matter how many times it is used. Although the original reference involves lasers, the quote can be adapted for other stories with no loss of humour value. See 'I want sharks with fickin DVD drives on their head'. A

  • Just don't share it. (Score:5, Funny)

    by nairnr ( 314138 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @03:18PM (#7294470)
    Please for the love of god, don't set this up as a windows share. It is bad enough that we have people accidently printing email on our HP5000 4' plotters. No, you can print your email on wood!.

    I suspect God may have had one of these for the tablets for Moses...

  • Someone had to try it... (Score:5, Funny)

    by keep_it_simple_stupi ( 562690 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @03:18PM (#7294472) Homepage
    "Customers have also come up with some notably bad ideas, including engraving plastic butane lighters."

    You know, it's amazing we've lasted this long.

  • Another use... (Score:5, Funny)

    by tomzyk ( 158497 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @03:18PM (#7294480) Journal
    Have your own tattoo parlor, right on your computer desktop!

    (Caution: be sure to have plenty of gauze and ice, a phone, and be in a place where the EMTs can find you easily...)
    • No, no, no.....it's for Tattoo REMOVAL! :)

    • Re:Another use... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by John M Ford ( 653329 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @03:49PM (#7294824)
      I used to work with an 25W Epilog [epiloglaser.com] CO2 laser. While watching a coworker, I saw him place a plastic part to be cut in the machine. What I did not see was that the part was placed incorrectly. He then closed the lid and pressed the start button. When he realized the part was incorrectly placed, he opened the lid and reached to save the part without hitting stop. Usually this would not be a problem. Unfortunately for him, he had bypassed the safety switch early that day and had not reset it. It burned a nice little line all the way down and through his index fingernail and into the cuticle before he realized his error.

      While I have no doubt that it is possible to mark skin in decorative ways with this machine, I can assure you that it is not a painless process. :-)

      John

    • And never mind the uses this guy [male-initiation.net] might be able to find for it.

  • Mac not? nooooo! (Score:3, Funny)

    by ben_of_copenhagen ( 649118 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @03:18PM (#7294482)
    They have to fix a mac driver for this. With xmas coming up, i could really annoy all my friends by making them nasty wooden door signs written in Gill Sans Ultra Bold.
  • We mentioned this wondertool before.

    At least now they are giving us fair warning of a RP!
  • Somebody should try to get the videos and get a bittorrent started. E-mail me if you can get the files, since I have a .edu and would be willing to seed (I couldn't get the videos before Slashdotting occurred).

  • A Windows-only peripheral that literally smokes!? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23, 2003 @03:21PM (#7294523)
    I think I'd like to have one ... but not with my son in the house - he be testing whether it could print on "dog".
    • Heck why not? Veterinary tatoos are expensive and not very custom. With this baby, you could tattoo your dog with a bone-shaped tatoo, "bad to the bone" caption, and a phone number in case he gets lost when he's out with the ladies ...

  • view the thing (Score:3, Informative)

    by seriv ( 698799 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @03:22PM (#7294525)
    you can see a picture of it here, the link provided above [versalaser.com]. And a techTV spot of it.
    -Seriv

    • Re:view the thing (Score:5, Informative)

      by seriv ( 698799 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @03:25PM (#7294560)
      or view images of what it can do Here [unleash.com].
      -Seriv
      • In the list of images, there's 'glassware'.

        How on earth did they get a laser to engrave glass?

        • I don't know how they did it, but here's one solution:

          Get some self-adhesive paper and glass etching compound. Put the paper over the glass and laser it, giving you a template for the etching compound. Trowel that on, then wait 5 minutes, rinse it off, and peel off the mask. Hey presto, you've got precisely etched glass.

          Of course, if you wanted a fine pattern, you might have trouble with the mask ripping, but that could probably be solved with a cardboard or plastic mask (especially good if you plan to

        • Glass is not transparent to all wavelengths; notably IR and UV don't pass through. All you need is a LASER in some wavelength the glass isn't transparent to.

          A follow-up question is what did they make the internal prisms from?
      • that was neat. I was shocked by the pic [unleash.com] of the glass. up until then, I was thinking of flat surfaces.
      • Hey, now at last it should be possible to design gravestones using the latest clip art from MS Office! I wonder how long it would take until Clippy start saying stuff like "It looks like you're writing a gravestone..."
      • Check out the dino [unleash.com]. Now I ask you, doesn't that pattern look just like ones you've seen in hobby shops? Which means whoever made this thing has *pirated* a *physical object*! This baby is a copy machine for tangible objects - if they happen to be thin and flat.

  • Hurry for Moore's Law (Score:3, Funny)

    by tessaiga ( 697968 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @03:23PM (#7294536)
    The built-in 25W laser is powerful enough to burn quickly through paper and cardboard without leaving so much as a charred edge. It can cut through wood 1/4 inch thick or more. The thin beam barely discolors the edges of the top surface but leaves the sides of the cut a rich, dark brown. Acrylic plastics such as Plexiglas cut easily, too. The beam moves with surprising speed for wood and paper but slower and at lower power for plastics, so the heat from the beam can melt the plastic edge and leave a smooth, polished surface.
    Give'em another year to improve it, and us budget mad scientists will be able to afford one of these for the next time Halle Berry breaks into our secret ice-covered labs, too.

  • DANGER! DANGER! (Score:4, Funny)

    by HungWeiLo ( 250320 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @03:25PM (#7294559)
    Disaster (serves 6)

    1 tbsp. of laser that can cut anything
    2 qts. of Windows drivers

    Mix ingredients gently. Bake for 5 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Serve immediately.
  • I have yet to meet the geek that doesn't drool over one of these things, they are very cool.

    If you watched the TechTV episode, there is not much to these puppys. They could easily be $1000 dollar items. It is clear that the price point is due to relative lack of volume, but the assembly and manufacture of these things could be done very cheaply. I suspect after HP or some other large scale manufacturer provides an offer that they can't refuse that these suckers will be available for the general marketpl
    • Uhmmm, unless the lasers are considerably cheaper than this [parallax-tech.com], I think that you are going to be hard pressed to put one together for a grand.

  • That's it! (Score:3, Funny)

    by appleLaserWriter ( 91994 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @03:29PM (#7294610)
    I'm getting one so I can print my agendas in stone tablets.

  • Wait!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipakNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Thursday October 23, 2003 @03:29PM (#7294611) Homepage Journal
    Check to see if Amazon or SCO have patented writing on stone tablets, before you buy!

  • Spoon! (Score:3)

    by da3dAlus ( 20553 ) <dustin.grau@REDHATgmail.com minus distro> on Thursday October 23, 2003 @03:34PM (#7294670) Homepage Journal
    Now Chairface Chippendale can finally finish writing his name on the moon!

  • The next generation of these . . . (Score:5, Funny)

    by StefanJ ( 88986 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @03:40PM (#7294728) Homepage Journal
    . . . will only cost $1000, and get bundled for free with new systems, but you'll need to buy $300 fusion plasma cartridges for them every few months that are designed to go critical and explode if you try to refill them.

    For now, I'll stick with an X-Acto knife and that wood burning kit I got at a garage sale.

    Stefan

  • 20 times more power at 3 times the cost (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Chris Y Taylor ( 455585 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @03:41PM (#7294734) Homepage
    For about $20,000 dollars more you can get a used 1kW industrial laser. It'll be powerful enough to cut 3/8" steel plate if you slow the feed rate down. Of course it takes up more room. And the operating costs will be a tad higher. But, it is just the thing for disposing of unwanted British spies.

    http://www.franeklaser.com/usedlasers.htm
  • I've actually operated one of these before.....I'm not sure it's by the same company, but there's a little fabrication shop about a 5 minute walk from my office that we frequently service their computers for. They use corel draw, and this laser. It's a nifty process to watch, maybe the next time I get over there, I'll set up a video camera and record it....I've seen it make everything..

  • Magic behind Balsa Machining Service (Score:3, Interesting)

    by StefanJ ( 88986 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @03:47PM (#7294810) Homepage Journal
    A Use Case for this thing:

    My summer hobby is model rocketry.

    I usually build my own. Specifically, I recreate old, old models from the early 1960s:

    http://www.io.com/~stefanj/posed_with_hustler.jp g

    http://www.io.com/~stefanj/017_14A.JPG (big)

    Usually I cut my own fins, and less often turn my own nose cones, but if I'm in a hurry or need exact work there's a great outfit that uses a laser cutter to create these pieces.

    You send them a file in an accepted rocketry-CAD format, select a material, and use a spreadsheet to figure out the prices. They can cut cardstock, balsa, thin plywood, and special laminates.

    The burning effect is really interesting. The centers of the fins and rings and such are creamy white wood, the edges a dark chocolate brown with an interesting ridged texture.

    Stefan
  • I actually got a sample piece of laser cut wood form them a while back, and I must say it looks pretty damn good... I was hoping the sample would have my name on it or something but it just shows the Versalaser logo on it and comes with a whole bunch of lit. with different colors you can get it in :p
  • Laser etching is cool, I guess, but what would be even cooler is bringing 3D printing to the masses. Right now these rapid prototyping "printers" cost hundreds of thousands, but one day you'll be (over)paying Lexmark for DRM'd "LiquidPlastic-jet" cartridges so that you can print out cheap parts of your own design, or barbie dolls, or warhammer knockoffs, eating utensils, dildos(?!), etc...

    The precursor to the nano-forge.

    --

    • Well, add a motorized turntable to one of these babies, and you have a decent mockup of a laser lathe. 'course, you can't cut concave surfaces, but there's still alot it could automate.

  • Fabric cutters (Score:3, Informative)

    by sakusha ( 441986 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @03:55PM (#7294879)
    These laser cutters are fairly common in the fashion industry, they've used them for quite a few years. They use them to cut fabric for later assembly. I used to live in a loft right across from a fabric cutter shop, I could watch out my window and into their shop floor and see them at work. They have long tables where they lay out bolts of cloth, about a hundred layers folded over each other, then an arm holding the laser moves over it by computer control and cuts through all the layers. It sort of looks like an old-style pen plotter when it's in motion.
    So there is probably a much bigger market for these devices than you'd suspect.
  • Magazines like RCM [rcmmagazine.com] that offer printed blueprints for radio controlled airplanes and such could just as easily include drawings suitable for feeding a Versalaser....keep plunking in sheets of balsa, and in a few hours you've got all the parts to build your new plane, all laser-cut to tolerance.

    Nice.

    --riney

  • Sample Products (Score:4, Informative)

    by MhzJnky ( 443677 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @04:07PM (#7295008) Homepage
    Here [engravingsys.com] you can see some sample products made by it.

    Think I'll order my up one and start working on filling up the Trophy case.
  • I was looking into how much it would cost to buy a 25W laser and build an X Y plotter to run it and came across this article [fixedassetinfo.com] describing how you could write off 57% of the cost because it is basically a machine tool.
  • OK, it's cute. But most slashdot geeks could get much better use of a similarly priced laser cad system that cuts 3d objects, makes PC boards, and can still "print" and engrave 2d surfaces rather than this 2d system that is designed to only print. This may have a very easy to use interface, but many things that have limited functionality do.
  • A $10,000 printer, and Slashdot is worried about there only being Windows drivers. Pathetic! If you can afford a printer that expensive, you can afford to have a machine running Windows.
  • Now you too can reenact the famous Goldfinger scene with family and friends. "Do you expect me to cut the grass?" 'No my friend I expect you to die!"
  • for this printer willbe when it can produce a printed circuit board. Then I'll buy one!

  • Buncha Slashbot Gripers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by belloc ( 37430 ) <<belloc> <at> <latinmail.com>> on Thursday October 23, 2003 @05:10PM (#7295591) Homepage
    Unfortunately, Windows drivers only at this time.

    This thing could have been some sort of combination Time Machine/Transmogrifier/Fountain of Youth, but if it only had Windows drivers, we'd have to find a way to bring in the holy war and complain about it.

    Slashbots: One. Track. Mind.

    Belloc

  • Diamond cutting (Score:3, Interesting)

    by j3110 ( 193209 ) <samterrell @ g m a i l.com> on Thursday October 23, 2003 @05:18PM (#7295647) Homepage
    I wonder what effects things like this has on the jewelry industry. In the next century, there will probably be children's toys that make and cut diamonds into any shape they can imagine with their 3d holographic editing system :)
  • TechTV last month had a case mod contest where the grand prize was a versalaser. The guy who won is one lucky SOB. The article about it can be found here:

    http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/supergeek/story /0,24330,3536290,00.html [techtv.com]
  • These things (i.e., laser cutters of this nature) have been around for a while. Any decent architecture graduate school has a few of them sitting around their fabrication shop, right next to the 3D plastic modeling system. They *are* incredibly useful for model making, and have been around for about 5 or 10 years. We've done some consulting to architecture schools, and I must say, the technology is impressive. It's particularly neat how it integrates with AutoCAD, and how you can use it to not only cut, but
  • The real question is this: Does it print on paper? :)
  • Actually, you can print on wood with your own laser printer...and a clothes iron.

    1. Print the image on paper backwards (mirror the image).

    2. Place the printout face-down on the wood.

    3. Set the clothes iron on high, and use it to heat the paper enough to melt the toner (but not so hot as to burn the paper or wood). While applying the heat, carefully peel the paper off - leaving toner behind.

    Helps if you set the printer to use as much toner as possible. Takes a few tries to get the knack.

  • To be honest, I don't want to be anywhere near a 25 watt laser.

    * Do not look into laser beam with remaining eye *

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