This is a laser engraver I built in the​ Spring of 2016. I designed all electrical and mechanical systems as well as chose the software needed. The entire process from conception to the working prototype shown above was two and a half months. 

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The linear motion is created by stepper motors on V-Slot aluminum extrusion. All the black and gray plastic parts were designed and 3d printed by myself. This allowed for a high degree of customization and a quick turnaround for prototyping different piece part ideas.

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Soldering the connections on the homemade motor leads was the most tedious point of the project. Wire management of all these wires became a readily apparent issue. 3d printed wire chains and aluminum extrusion cable holders allowed for routing the wire in a much more neat fashion. The electronic components consist of an arduino nano as the brains of the machine and two EasyDrivers controlling the stepper motors.  A constant current and constant voltage limiter places a current limit of the power fed to the laser.

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The arduino runs GRBL, an interpreter to translate Gcode into movement of the stepper motors. GRBL also takes input from the various limit switches and controls whether the laser is on or off. On the computer, I use a Java program Universal Gcode Sender to control the machine. The program would take a text file of Gcode and send it to the arduino as well as allow me to manually control the machine for testing.  Lastly, I would use Inkscape, a vector graphics program, to create the Gcode.