Can you expand on why you think this would be so great for home workshops? How do you envision using the laser? Handheld, mounted, or on a CNC?
At the moment, there are expensive-but-affordable home CNC laser cutters, typically for a small number of thousand EUR/USD. The more powerful ones can do a very neat job cutting (up to a few mm of) plywood. There are also CNC plasma cutters, which do a good but slightly rough job of cutting sheet metal, and are relatuvely large and complex beasts. I guess a highly-powerful laser, of the type envisioned, would offer the best of all worlds: relatively neat and quick cutting of all materials on the same compact machine.
They might also replace handheld plasma cutters (and welders?) too.
Edit: It easily cut 1/4 ply (used 2 passes, but judging by the burn marks behind it I only need one). And that's without air assist to clear to the smoke which would help it cut deeper.
The world of home laser apparati is kinda wild.
Searching for Comgrow, Creality Falcon, Atomstack, or Sculpfun laser engraver will get you pretty far.
Edit: I should add the more dishonest chinese sellers will advertise "20w or 40w laser engraver" and what they mean is the entire machine consumes 40w with a 5w optical output. Dont be fooled.
On the other hand, wood cutting is done with CO2 lasers which have a significantly longer wavelength of around 10 micrometers. This wavelength is absorbed very well by wood and most plastics, but is mostly reflected by metals. Additionally, the longer wavelength means that it cannot be focused to as small of a point, which reduces the maximum power.
Chip lasers would still be bound to the same wavelength limitations, so you couldn't cut both materials with the same laser. What you could do, though, is have a machine with two lasers - especially if they are very compact - and select which one to use depending on what material needs to be cut.
I don't see how a laser would be an improvement on any of those, unless the goal is to CNC with extremely tight tolerances, but even then... it seems unlikely that you'll be CNCing blocks of metal, more likely just 2D cuts from sheets of metal, which is pretty limiting.
It would certainly be fun for some stuff, but I think the danger level of a super high power laser detracts from the fun.
More powerful cutting lasers would definitely be great for industrial use cases.
I love the idea of using a mill/router instead, but IMO the more complicated process is fundamentally more dangerous. If a reflected beam can conceivably pierce the enclosure though, hmmm...
Most sheet good are too large to be placed on or moved around by a cnc mill table.
CNC milling is a slow process (unless you can drop six figures on one).
CNC mills take a lot longer to setup and program, and also require more skill to have a successful result (no chatter, not breaking bits, ramping into the cut on interior features).
Good CNC mills that can handle steel are massively heavy and large machines which makes transport and setup difficult for the home machinist.
A lot of people also cut sheet metal which a CNC tends to be terrible at.
Not $10k: https://youtu.be/w26DHMccicE?t=637
Even though it's cheap, the cuts still look pretty smooth and precise. I can't speak to the safety, as I would hope a $10k CNC would have more safety features.
This part is actually a typical good result in spite of how bad it is: https://youtu.be/w26DHMccicE?t=731
Deflection is bad. Repeatability is poor. etc.
If you put even mild steel on that, that machine will have no hope.
The article literally has a video of the laser actually cutting stainless steel (aka the Devil's chewing gum). The title says "melt steel". That was the practically the whole point of making these kinds of laser.
Video link: https://youtu.be/SFXmFNTviRI
> We even used it to cut through steel. As the bright, beautiful beam carved a disc out of a metal plate 100 μm thick, our entire lab huddled around, watching in amazement.
So... it can cut steel! As long as the steel is 100 μm thick. I think that is literally about the thickness of a piece of paper.
This newfound information does not weaken my skepticism about the hobbyist laser mill that can cut through (useful) pieces of steel coming to a garage near you any time soon, unfortunately.
I'm just extremely skeptical of a steel-cutting laser mill being cheaper than a $10k CNC any time soon. Hardware is hard. Semiconductors are even harder.
As far as I can see, the article provides no indication of when they even hope to bring this product to market, which is never a good sign.
I would love to be wrong.
And really, that video is unsatisfying. They show a mark on the steel, but -- as far as I saw -- they never even show any steel piece that was cut out by the laser. Maybe the steel melts at the very surface... but it may not be possible to cut through a piece of steel unless it is thinner than a piece of paper? We have so little real world information on this laser.
* for wood, faster and/or thicker cutting, vs. existing CNC laser cutters
* for sheet metal, neater/cleaner cutting (i.e. cleaner cuts, higher tolerances, less subsequent prep-work needed) perhaps in a smaller neater machine, vs. existing CNC plasma cutters.
Especially within the context of a CNC machine, I wouldn't be overly concerned about safety - all of the more powerful CNC laser cutters I'm aware of already come with an exclosure - both for laser safety, and to constrain smoke (before it's vented safely).
If it can cut metal, it'd probably not suffer much in the way of limitations on other materials... .