Kamloops Makerspace Laser Cutter

We at Kamloops Makerspace have finally purchased a laser cutter. First of all thank you for all your help and advice in the past especially for helping us choose a laser cutter.

Myself and Nicholas Adams are coming to Vancouver next week to pick up the laser cutter. We would love to come visit VHS on our way. We are particularly interested in seeing your laser cutter setup. If there is someone around that could give us a short (or long!) tour of how you maintain and share your laser cutter, we would be very grateful!

We are still waiting for customs to clear but it sounds like that should be done in the next few days. Is there anyone around next Tuesday (March 30th) or Wednesday during the day that could give us a tour?

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Hey! That’s great news, lasers are awesome.

I would be able to meet you on Wednesday after 6pm if that works for you. I’ve been really involved with our cutter lately and can give you a tour of the space in geneal and run you through everything laser cutter related.

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Woo! Congrats on getting a laser cutter.

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congrats, Aras, that’s beautiful! Ours is finally working again here in Victoria and man is it fine to have a working laser again!

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@Logan_Buchy awesome! We will be in Vancouver Wednesday morning and will go to pick up the laser in the afternoon. We will come to VHS just before 6pm and meet you when you get there.

Will there be anyone else at VHS on Wednesday around 5pm just in case we get there a little bit earlier? We are going to have a long drive back home but it will be well worth it to see your setup!

While we are in Vancouver we would like to also find some good materials for the laser cutter to get us started. I was thinking of getting a few pieces of acrylic of various colours and thickness. Do you have any suggestions where in Vancouver or Fraser valley area we could find a good deal on some acrylic?

Thanks for all the support everyone, we are so excited! :smiley:

Check out the “local supplier” page on our wiki. There’s a place out in
Coquitlam near the highway that should have some stuff.

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Hey @arasbm and Nicholas,

Thanks for coming by last night! I really wish I could have stayed to chat longer.

I wanted to give you links to the membership system we are developing and also to the laser access control system.

Nomos:

This is our membership management system. It allows us to manage access control, payment and integrations with other services. Most of the chatter is done on Slack in the #nomos channel. PM me your emails and I’ll send you an invite. The champions of Nomos right now are @Jarrett and @laftho

Laser Access System

The above is the code for our laser access control system. This is running on a raspberry pi and controls the SSRs that bring the laser, chiller, air compressor and controller up at the correct time. It also provides the web interface I showed you which allows the startup sequence to commence.
The writer of this was primarily @garthomite. It looks like there is documentation to get started, I can also help with figuring out and documenting the circuit if needed.

I’ll make sure to come by the Kamloops space next time I drive through (probably this summer I’ll be making the trip a few times)