[Charles] wrote in to share the project he just built for the London Hackerspace. He calls it CoolBot, and as the name indicates it’s responsible for keeping the laser cutter from overheating.
At its heart the system is a water pump. It uses a plastic storage container as a reservoir, with an outfeed from the laser tube coming in the top of the lid. [Charles] mounted a temperature sensor using a 3D printed part to anchor it in the center of the return stream. An Arduino clone uses this sensor, as well as ambient room temperature and laser tube temperature sensors to decide when to switch on the cooling pump. As with any hackerspace add-on, this wouldn’t be complete without Internet connectivity so he included an Ethernet shield in the project box. Speaking of, that box uses panel-mount connectors to keep dust and water away from the electronics. But the lid of the controller box also includes a character LCD for quick reference.
Don’t miss [Charles’] explanation of the system in the video after the break.
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