OSE Lasersaur Build and Documentation Sprint Update

The OSE Lasersaur build of the open source, 100 Watt laser cutter is going well – see intro in last post. We have so far uploaded a few instructionals on Dozuki –

The instructionals were generated in real-time from picture and step uploads that I posted while building the machine at Nortd Labs.

Here is a sample –

and you can see the others such as OSE Lasersaur Frame by going to the Dozuki page. In particular – you can see the Outer Frame, Frame Table, and Gantry Frame. You can see all the pictures at Trovebox.

You can see some timelapses in our YouTube playlist, such as the Gantry, Table, and Frame:

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There is much to be done on documentation. First, the Lasersaur project has extensive documentation already – including a dozen or so steps for each module – and about as many pictures for each. We are extending these step instructions to full step-by-step – and have about 200 steps and pictures in Dozuki and Trovebox already, which came from my Trovebox App and realtime build spreadsheet. There are a couple hundred steps left.

For the ones that exist – one can add CAD pictures to the instructions from the FreeCAD files, where the entire machine is broken into modules found in the IGES CAD model files here. From the step instructions, one can generate animated assembly animations – and ultimately – language agnostic instructionals (minimal or no words) – such as this example of the Brick Press frame that we did last year –

So who is up to generating these for the Lasersaur laser cutter? That would help a lot – but would require careful study of both the pictures and the CAD model of the Lasersaur in FreeCAD. To view the FreeCAD model, right click and select Blender view to rotate the image with the middle mouse button, and hit control-B to zoom in to a selected area. From these two,  one can lay out a careful step-by-step language-agnostic instructional, where we are doing these in Google Drawings for easy updates. See protocol here. We will need this for paralleling the builds of future Lasersaurs. My estimation is that with 12 people (because there are 12 modules), we can finish a build in 8 hrs. Stefan’s estimation is that it would take 3 days with a full team. My estimation is pending the availability of clear, language agnostic IKEA-style (but better) diagrams. That is not easy.

If you would like to join us in this design sprint – sign up for the Sprints here, and you will receive an invite to a Google Hangout. We are checking in today at noon, 4 PM, and 8 PM Austria time. We will be checking in for 1/2 hour at these times – and the rest of the time we’ll just have the Google Hangout up without talking. We need to finish the build by tomorrow night. If you show up, please help us make the dcumentation part of that happen. -MJ