

Lasersaur: The Open Source Laser Cutter - sown
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/405545346/lasersaur-open-source-laser-cutter-0

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angusgr
Maybe it's a non-issue, but I wonder what the legal/regulatory implications
for this kind of thing are?

A member at our hackerspace (makehackvoid.com) has a cheapie CNC laser
engraver that he's modified for GCODE and used to cut out some stuff. We
looked at what it would take to put in our space, and at least for Australia
the amount of regulatory/approval overhead is prohibitively huge, both for
getting approval for the initial design and then for legally running it. No
idea what it's like in other countries, though.

Also, I'm aware that the regulations exist for a reason. Big powerful lasers
can do a lot of damage to unsuspecting humans.

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jrockway
In the US, you can do pretty much anything you want in your house, as long as
nobody finds out. ("The right of the people to be secure in their persons,
houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall
not be violated.") Want to burn your eyes out with a laser? Have fun.

If you are putting it into industrial use, you probably have to have things
like mechanical interlocks to prevent it from laser-ing off your employees'
fingers, and you need to wear anti-laser goggles when using it. Things like
that. Being open source or not from a big company shouldn't cause any
problems, though.

As for a hacker space... well, how often do you get inspected? Never? Yeah. (I
will point my friend at this comment, though, as he actually runs a hacker
space. Having been there, I can't imagine there is a ton of regulatory
oversight, however.)

~~~
mbenjaminsmith
As far as I know if you're selling things in kit form you're excused from
any/all regulations and liability.

The kit airplane industry in the US was a reaction to strict liability laws
that made private aircraft manufacture and ownership prohibitively expensive.
(My old man has built and sold a few.)

I would guess if you can sell / operate an experimental aircraft without
restriction you could do the same with cutting tools.

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bjelkeman-again
This reminds me of the work the Open Source Ecology project is doing with a
plasma torch table: <http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/?p=1424>
<http://www.openfarmtech.org/index.php/Category:Torch_Table>

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steveklabnik
Other people are doing this too, but it's still cool!

I know Neil Gershenfeld's students over at MIT are working on something like
this as part of Fab Lab 2.0...

