atoms&electrons;

When I was younger I was a big fan of Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther as Chief Inspector Clouseau. One of my favorite running gags was his butler, Cato, who in addition to answering the phone and preparing meals was also responsible for attacking Clouseau without warning. These attacks were designed to keep Clouseau vigilant and in fighting shape, and there were many epic battles between them. Several decades later I’ve come to realize that I have my own personal Cato in the form of my cat. Our cat is sweet and loving with everyone else in the family, but with me her favorite thing to do is attack me when I least expect it. She will literally wait by the door for hours and when I come home she jumps at me with her back arched waiting to be chased around the house. Like Clouseau, I am responsible for my attacker’s behavior – having trained her to attack me with our games.

For my birthday last year I decided to get a new toy for my workshop – a laser cutter. I spent a fair amount of time researching various options and eventually decided on a 40 Watt CO2 laser. I purchased an inexpensive Chinese laser cutter from Full Spectrum Engineering. FSE imports them and then sells them from their US offices, which means you get to deal with a local US-based company. For just under $2K at the time you got a 40 Watt CO2 laser with approximately 12" x 11" cutting area. The specs have only improved since then. Mine also came with an upgraded controller card that allows the laser to be driven from Mach3 or other CNC control software.

My machine needed a bit of TLC after unpacking. The X-Axis was completely misaligned and various screws had come loose, etc. The mirrors and laser lenses were misaligned, which I fixed using thermal imprint paper and a very low power setting to figure out where the laser was pointing at each point along the path. At times the answer was — pointed directly at my hands. Good times. This is pretty typical of these imported machines.