[Joe G.]

Originally Posted by MetalJacket

Hello,
Our team was recently looking into getting a small laser cutter after seeing the one sold by buildyourcnc.com. After talking to the engineering teacher at our school, we were happy and surprised to hear that the school had already purchased one of these kits for the engineering classes however, after a emailing the buildyourcnc tech support we found out that the blackTooth's CO2 laser doesn't cut metal. While we can still use it on wood and plastic, I wanted to investigate a little further and see if any teams knew of a system of similar size (this one is 20x24 which was nice because we don't have a large storage space) that was capable of cutting metal. Thanks

-Jesse

I think you'll have a hard time finding a machine at a reasonable price or size to cut metal. Most metal cutting lasers are targeted at industrial workplaces, and are designed to cut full size 4x8 sheets of metal. Not to mention the wattage required will usually be four figures, which requires some pretty hefty industrial power.

This is the smallest metal cutting laser I've ever seen: http://www.hurricanelasers.com/betty

There are plenty of uses for a low-power laser system in FRC though. We make plenty of delrin parts and wood/acrylic prototypes with a machine owned by a local college.