Endurance lasers rock!
Quite some time ago I purchased one of George’s original 10 W lasers. It was an impulse buy as I really had no particular use for it at the time, but I did want to set something up to cut foam sheets for packages. Well, time went by and I never did get around to sending it up. Then the covid 19 virus hit. I took some aluminum extrusion, printed some parts off of thingiverse, grabbed a control board and some stepper drivers and a laser cutter was born. One of the first tests was cutting clear sheets of PETG for face shields to be donated to doctors and hospitals in New York at the height of the pandemic. Since it was a blue light laser, I followed the instructions in George’s video, taping masking tape over the path of the laser to allow it to cut the clear material. Once we had everything set up we expanded the laser path to cut two rows of four shields at a time, which took just over an hour and a half. By the time we were done we had cut 500 shields, assembled them to 3-D printed parts and donated them to various hospitals around town. The laser performed flawlessly. It was, quite literally, a lifesaver. I guess now I have no excuse but to start using it for its original purpose, repurposing large cardboard boxes and cutting foam sheets to properly package refurbished 3-D printers.