Laser cutter, start slicing stuff for under 50 dollars

Step 3 Mechanics.

Now how do you make the parts that move?
(Update, if you want you can find a way to attach the laser to the print head of an etch a sketch and not worry about this part. Here's a demo on how to take apart an etch a sketch)

First you need to use a 3/8" drill bit to drill a perpendicular hold in your scanners carriage. Fit your 3/8" rod in it and hold it down firmly with a pipe bracket. Do the same for the other scanner

Cut your Aluminum tube into two pieces of 3".

Take the block of wood you cut to 2" by 2" and use another bracket to affix the 2.5" tube to the top side. This is your X directed slider.
Then use another bracket to affix the other 3" tube to the lower side perpendicular to the first. You can see the pictures or the movie to see what I mean. This is your Y directed slider. A breif plotter demo is at the end of this video:

Fit your Rods through these sliders and ensure they are all perpendicular to each other. Raise one scanner off the floor 1" so that the slider is not sitting at any angles and can slide easily in both directions. USE LUBE.

Once everything is arranged and slides just so. Open up your old school windows PC and it's time to get postscripty!
-bg

Comments

[Chalain]

If you have little money and a surplus of time and patience, find a metal recycler near you. I hit one a few years ago, they had literally had a pile of old PC equipment standing out in the scrapyard (in the rain and mud). I stripped maybe a dozen printers, PCs and scanners of their drives, motors and gears and filled a 5-gal bucket with computer parts. Everything had to be tested, of course, but all of it worked. The best part? Scrap recyclers do everything by weight. The guy looked at my bucket and rang it up as "Misc scrap/steel: $0.11 per pound". I walked out with two dozen motors for for $11. YMMV, but if you're just looking to fill a junk drawer with experiment parts, you can't beat the price. The worst part is squatting in a mud pit for an hour in the freezing cold disassembling computers.

[fostersfriend]

I want to know where they have something like that In the chicago suburbs

[whample]

Here in the Seattle area we have a place called rePC that has two locations.  While certainly not as cheap as the scrapyard, they have tons of old semi-junked scrap printers and other computer components sold as is on the cheap.

[rbinford]

yep, used to work at the seattle store .,and you can find anything in the as-is section. the warehouse in tukwila has a lot more stuff it seems but seattle has a good as is section

[79spitfire]

Dude! Rock on! The scrap yard is one of my favorite places!

[Foxfur]

Me too! Surplus Gizmos in Hillsboro, OR will rock your junkdrawer. They had a CO2 laser, but, sniff sniff, it's gone...