Lasersaur Modular Bed

thingiverse

This modular robust aluminum cutting bed was one of my high school student's design to replace the expensive, cumbersome and fragile aluminum honeycomb. The concept was to use strips of 6061-T6 aluminum that could be easily replaced and removed individually without the need to replace the entire honeycomb. Our student designed two different 3D printed brackets that bolt to the standard extrusion with the standard T-nuts to give us a 1" spaced bed and for 1/4 of the bed a 1/2" spaced bed. Obviously if you are cutting lots of small parts all the time this specific design may not work for you, but you could redesign the brackets for your own custom spacing. The aluminum is 6061-T6 0.063" thick x 1.5" tall by 33.5" long. We ordered 70 pieces of which 12 we cut in half for the smaller spacing area. We still have a number of pieces left over for replacements. The total cost was $203....which btw is about what I spent on one sheet of honeycomb. You could bevel the top edges to reduce reflections, but to be honest it's been working great without that hassle. The only commitment is in cutting down the adjustable bed support to lay these extrusions on the literal bottom of the laser bed. There just isn't enough height to keep this module as it was and still have proper focal length. We calculated the height of 1.5" for the aluminum to give us the proper height to cut 3mm-12mm thick material without moving the bed. If you wanted to etch taller things you can replace the strips with shorter ones or you can simply remove a couple of strips for the cut you are working on and replace them when you are done. I have actually found this ability very nice for etching odd shaped items. enjoy!