If you’ll recall, some months ago we held a little competition for readers to submit artwork destined for laser-etching on the backsides of Amazon’s Kindle. After everyone voted on the top five out of the mountain of selections, we took the gaggle of readers down to our friends at Adafruit Industries (headed up by the lovely and delightful Limor Fried and Phil Torrone) for some time under the laser. While we were there getting our etch on with their massive laser, we convinced Limor and Phil to show off some of the other crazy kit they’ve got in the labs — and we’ve captured it all on film… er, video. Take a look at our excursion into the world of dynamic DIY’ing — we think you’ll like what you see.
We posted some additional photos of the etched Kindles here – and you can also view the Engadget show M4V here…
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Still something I don’t get about pick and place machines. Do they solder the components too? If not, how to the components stay on. When you picked the board out those capacitors seemed pretty anchored.
Phil & Limor, for the record? We are ALL truly envious of your Pick and Place, and especially for your hyper cool laser etcher-cutter. I think all of us would love to be the Wizards of the Wall Street, but would never want to compete with you. Thank you so much for sharing these frack’n ultra cool projects that we can build in our homes. My soldering has improved 10,000%. So Warlock and Wizard, you have my best wishes for continued success, and the envy of all my dreams.
They use a 32 watt Epilog laser. They talked about it on their weekly chat last week. Ask an Engineer chat is Saturday nights, 7 pm, PST, @ http://www.adafruit.com, then click “chat”.
Still something I don’t get about pick and place machines. Do they solder the components too? If not, how to the components stay on. When you picked the board out those capacitors seemed pretty anchored.
“To the laser!”
@Mark: I’d guess there would be some solder paste on the board that the parts would stick to.
Hey, what kind of laser is that?
Phil & Limor, for the record? We are ALL truly envious of your Pick and Place, and especially for your hyper cool laser etcher-cutter. I think all of us would love to be the Wizards of the Wall Street, but would never want to compete with you. Thank you so much for sharing these frack’n ultra cool projects that we can build in our homes. My soldering has improved 10,000%. So Warlock and Wizard, you have my best wishes for continued success, and the envy of all my dreams.
They use a 32 watt Epilog laser. They talked about it on their weekly chat last week. Ask an Engineer chat is Saturday nights, 7 pm, PST, @ http://www.adafruit.com, then click “chat”.