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Table Top USP Lasers Slice, Dice, and So Much More

Posted by Zonk on Sat Jun 23, 2007 05:23 PM
from the not-sold-in-any-stores dept.
Biotech Science Technology
UltravioletLED writes "A company in Petaluma, California has developed highly programmable desktop lasers. The same devices used in hospitals could also be used to turn any metal surface black by simply changing the software. From the article: 'The technology once filled a large room at DARPA until Raydiance scientists made it into a compact, tabletop unit. Schuler (The CEO) said he hopes it will replace just about any cutting device you can think of, from a big metal saw to a precise surgical blade ... Now that it's a little bigger than a breadbox, researchers want to use them to kill tumors, identify friend or foe during combat, and even remove tattoos.' Femtosecond lasers for eye surgery have been around for years now, but these new lasers are far smaller and promise to have much greater versatility."
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[+] Laser Turns All Metals Black 333 comments
Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at the University of Rochester have found a way to change the properties of almost any metal by using a femtosecond laser pulse. This ultra-intense laser blast creates true 'black metal' from copper, gold or zinc by forming nanostructures at the surface of the metal. As these nanostructures capture radiation, the metals turn black. And as the process needs surprisingly low power, it could soon be used for a variety of applications, such as stealth planes, black jewels or car paintings. But read more for additional references and a picture of this femtosecond laser system."
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  • Now I can play SkyTag!

  • Black Metal ... Like Nargaroth? Burzum? (Score:5, Funny)

    by hattig (47930) on Saturday June 23 2007, @05:33PM (#19623489) Journal
    presenting your spouse with a jet-black engagement ring

    Dude, that's not the correct order to do things in, or you're being highly presumptuous.
  • so how long before it can be reduced to the size of a TV remote with a range of a metre or so?

    And will I have to make my own?

    If I use it in anger does it become a red one?

    Did Han shoot first or not?

  • Tabletop sharks? (Score:5, Funny)

    by iHasaFlavour (1118257) on Saturday June 23 2007, @05:51PM (#19623601) Homepage
    Until they manage to create suitable tabletop sharks upon which to mount these frickin lasers, I ain't impressed....
    • Evidently my cycloptic colleague informs my that that can't be done.


      Could you remind me what I pay you people for? Honestly, throw me a bone, here.

  • Yeah, I turned a whole bunch of stuff black when I last played with lasers. It pays to stay out of the way of the little red beam, it transpires.

  • Yes (Score:5, Informative)

    by El Lobo (994537) on Saturday June 23 2007, @05:59PM (#19623665)
    We are using programable lasers at our hospital too (well, kind of experimental). The programmable laser radiation doser may be successfully employed in rheumatology (arthritis, arthrosis), neurology (radiculitis, osteochondrosis), gynaecology (inflammation of adnexa), urology, in cases of pancreatonecrosis, pulmonary pathology, hepatitis, gastritis, trophic ulcer, dermatitis, eczema and other diseases.

    The dosing device goes together with laser therapy apparatus comprising only low-energy semiconductor and gas lasers. Its control mode is set with regard to the functional condition of the patient's body, the disease dynamics and stage.

    • Medical lasers (Score:5, Funny)

      by the_kanzure (1100087) on Saturday June 23 2007, @06:44PM (#19623927) Homepage

      We are using programable lasers at our hospital too (well, kind of experimental). The programmable laser radiation doser may be successfully employed in rheumatology (arthritis, arthrosis), neurology (radiculitis, osteochondrosis), gynaecology (inflammation of adnexa), urology, in cases of pancreatonecrosis, pulmonary pathology, hepatitis, gastritis, trophic ulcer, dermatitis, eczema and other diseases.
      Hey, quick question: does your hospital keep around anybody that knows lasers inside-and-out, or are they all closed source machines? Just wondering what sort of detailed information floats around hospitals, I suppose. Sometimes, I hear of labs that do not make their own machinery and consequently are "in the dark" when doing unknown procedures or updates to hardware.

      • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I Am Not A Doctor, but my dad is a chief lab technician (or some such) at an NHS hospital in Britain. He doesn't work with anything like as sophisticated as this, but from what I hear of the culture there, there's very little emphasis on "open source". Apparently the centrifuges, spectrographs and the like employed there are all very proprietary, expensive, and locked to the manufacturer in the way of supplies. They're rather like inkjets. The initial equipment is very cheap, but the cartridges that shit co

        • Of course, I'm essentially talking out of my ass here. If anyone has more accurate information I defer completely to them. And it's possible that experimental equipment like this is handled entirely differently, or that private American hospitals are different. But that's what I know.


          This should be every Slashdotters' signature! LOL

        • ... but from what I hear of the culture there, there's very little emphasis on "open source".

          Yeah, this reminds me of some post here or article somewhere else that pointed out that when medical technology goes more open source, there are going to be many gurus that pop up that have intense medical expertise, but the problem will be that they are using their own self-made equipment and so some people will be weary (as they should be) of seeking such 'experts'-- but this is good, since it will allow equipmen

    • That was quoted from
      http://www.nikiet.ru/eng/structure/hightemp/dos_la ser_radiation.html [nikiet.ru]

      your own comments would be a lot more interesting. Or is that your team?

  • How do I build one? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by the_kanzure (1100087) on Saturday June 23 2007, @06:24PM (#19623807) Homepage
    Does anyone know where I can go to learn to build my own desktop lasers? I have found Sam's laser FAQ [repairfaq.org] before, but surely there are other sources out there.
  • Was I the only one who read Table Top USB Lasers Slice, Dice, and So Much More? Man that would've been cool. :)
  • Barbie with monocle and stuffed, white persian cat, Ken strapped to table with the desktop laser humming. "So, do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Ken, I expect you to melt!" "Moooooooooooom!"
      • No, I think the joke conveyed the idea that this was about teasing the little sister by vandalizing her Barbies. In real life, I was limited to staging suicide scenes in her closet, Barbie hanging from a noose with a tiny suicide note pinned to her dress. Imagine how much cooler this would have been with a laser. The whole "mooooooom!" line at the end shows that the sibling unit is summoning the parental overunit due to my provocation.

  • who cares about black metal (Score:3, Funny)

    by bl8n8r (649187) on Saturday June 23 2007, @06:48PM (#19623945)
    I wonder how it would work with regards to:

    - cutting velveeta cheese
    - deterring the neighbors cat from pissing in my garden
    - deterring my neighbor from pissing in my garden
    - frying wood tics
    - boiling water
    - removing warts
    - engraving my initials on the water tower, from across town
    - lighting a joint
    • A BB gun or a magnifying glass can already do most of those.
    • - cutting velveeta cheese - yes
      - deterring the neighbors cat from pissing in my garden - yes
      - deterring my neighbor from pissing in my garden - yes
      - frying wood tics - yes
      - boiling water - yes
      - removing warts - yes
      - engraving my initials on the water tower, from across town - no, you would need expensive optics for long distance, and there is atmospheric scattering
      - lighting a joint - yes
      • Too concentrated. (Occasionally is all right, but not frequently. Unless it's a large plant, like, say, a tree.)

  • Obligatory off-topic Real Genius quotes (Score:3, Funny)

    by avitzur (105884) on Saturday June 23 2007, @06:50PM (#19623969) Homepage

    "It is possible to synthesize excited bromide in an argon matrix! Yes, it's an excimer, frozen in its excited state ... As soon as we apply a field, we couple to a state that is radiatively coupled to the ground state. I figure we can extract at least 10 to the 21st photons per cubic centimeter which will give one kilojoule per cubic centimeter at 600 nanometers, or, one megajoule per liter."

    "Looks at the facts: Very high power. Portable. Limited firing time. Unlimited range. All you'd need is a big spinning mirror and you could vaporize a human target from space.

    - Ron
    Pacific Tech [pacifict.com]
  • I was just talking with my friend about desktop fabrication and we came upon the topic of using metals rather than plastics.

    I proposed that it may be possible to have two canisters of particle-ized metals which could perhaps be alloyed together on a very small scale. This could be done using a standard 3D fabrication gantry system and some kind of micro-sized welding nozzle head thingy.

    Seeing a desktop cutting laser made me consider that this might work very well as the welding method - rather than electric

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Ant P. (974313)
      That sounds like a great idea - you could have actual printed circuit boards instead of taking big slabs of metal and sticking them in vats of acid for half an hour. With a bit of tweaking they could omit the board entirely and have the circuit be a self-supporting 3D structure.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by turtledawn (149719)
      This is already in existence (not that it isn't incredibly cool!). Here's a link to a fellow slashdotter's sculpture site; he has an article describing the technology. Oh, and the art is really neat.. I don't know him, nor do I own any of the pieces though I would like to.

      http://www.bathsheba.com/sculpt/process/index.html #3dprint [bathsheba.com]
    • Do you mean, crossing two streams of colloidal metals? I thought you said crossing the streams was *bad*...
  • Light sabers, anyone?
  • that none of these end up at Abu Graib or Gitmo.
         
    • (offtopic) Why? Lasers would actually show [i]damage[/i]. Things like electric shocks, waterboarding and kidney jabs, well, you can't prove they did it to you, can you? Kinda like the beaten-wife syndrome. Who wants to beat the crap out of your wife and then everybody knows you did it, when you can just jab her in the side every day and she's the only one who knows as she's pissing blood again?

  • New ? (Score:4, Informative)

    by dbcad7 (771464) on Saturday June 23 2007, @07:29PM (#19624265)
    Table top, and bigger, lasers used for cutting materials have been around for quite a while.

    I used to do waterjet cutting, and we had looked into laser cutters as well, but many materials are toxic when burned.. so we stuck with water. There are applications, where a laser is better. Wood is not practical with a waterjet because it absorbs water and the wood warps. Metals are problematic, but can be cut with laser, although much easier to add sand to a waterjet stream and cut it with water. I know that there were also cutters being developed using high pressure air. The waterjet machine I ran was made by Flow International, really an awesome machine. I kinda miss that job.

    • My husband owns a laser-engraving business (that's his URL that I have listed - my own website is pretty boring). He has just a little 45 watt one, but it cuts fine through wood, acrylic, plastic... even leather, though the smell of scorched flesh is pretty nasty. He can't cut metal, but there are plenty of ways he can mark it. Including one that bonds a black coating onto it.

      And, I might add, these lasers are expensive. Making a smaller version of a higher power laser than he owns means that it's certa
  • Man that would go perfect with this [brucegray.com].
  • Sweet! Table-top laser dice! Shit, that's awesome!

    er..wait. They are 20-sided, right?
  • Interesting... in the 6th image [wired.com] of the gallery, you can clearly see a Mitotoyo lens [mitutoyo.co.jp]. 20x magnification? (sorry can't read)

    Compared to normal lens, apo plan lenses have a long working distance. They are used in inspection microscopy because around the focus distance, you won't crash into the sample you are looking at. If I'm not mistaken, the red colour coding of the lens used here indicates it's a near infrared lens.

    Microscope lenses are often used with lasers to focus light into a tiny spot (say, into a

  • Nothing can go wrong. It's controlled by software! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Archtech (159117) on Sunday June 24 2007, @05:49AM (#19626863)
    "It can cut metal, heal burns and kill cancer tumors -- all without damaging heat.
    "All you need is one of his ultrashort pulse, or USP, lasers, he said. To change the function, just change the software".

    Hmmmm. So this laser can do different things. One moment, it's a deadly weapon. The next, it's a harmless cosmetic aid.

    And which of these things it does will be determined by... software? Written and maintained by whom? With what sort of utterly foolproof user interface?

    Can you say "Therac-25"?
  • From most other posts this appears to be old news.From my standpoint,its sad because I could not afford one.I wish to use it in conjunction with a copy machine to reproduce fine musical instruments and parts.(my own designs,of course,well,maybe some beloved to me too.)
    It's wonderful they have this,but disappointing when its still out of reach.Kinda like all the jetpacks,birdman suits,robots,computer clusters,super displays and other really practical cool shite that never makes it to the common man.
    What's wr

  • (The CEO) said he hopes it will replace just about any cutting device you can think of, from a big metal saw to a precise surgical blade ... identify friend or foe during combat...
    ..I'm a friend, can we skip the "identification" step please? I'd rather be hit by a stray bullet than get "surgically" spliced like sushi. Thanks, I love you.
  • I knew doing all of those fiddly hexagon puzzles would pay off, Angie! Secretary Anderson is depending on us!

    Let's begin the operation! [atlus.com]

  • H&K is finally making laser blasters? [wikipedia.org]

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