Shop time and safety talk

I tried to do this without buying hardware but I came to the conclusion that my time is worth something too :), not to mention my eyes. When working with lasers like this (which I believe should be classified Class 3B) please wear goggles, it's simply not worth loosing your eyesight over.

Source

So I set of to get the following items.

Stepper motor drivers

Sparkfun (Colorado) sells what seems to be a great unit the EasyDriver. $15 (need 2)

Laser holder and lens

AixiZ (Texas) sells laser holders. I got the 12x30mm one with a glass lens. ($20)

Laser Driver with TTL

I could go an modify the constant current laser driver from my previous post, or I could simply spend $6 on these and be done.

Laser goggles

Of course I should really not skimp on the laser goggles for 650nm laser light, and you should not do so either especially for only $30 at WickedLasers.

Printer Port

Last but not least the printer port. A quick search of the Linux EMC forums tells me that this card will do great, and it has two ports to boot! ($12)

Hopefully that is all that I will need for this little project. ( $78 )