Sometimes that heat requires supervision, depending on what the laser is doing. “It’s just shooting heat instead of ink dots.” “It works a lot like a printer,” he says. The amount of time required for the laser to do its duty varies: Anywhere from minutes to hours, with that time difference coming down to how much detail is being captured. “So it takes just the energy of a light bulb,” Newsome says, “but it’s putting it at such a tiny point that it can burn away whatever’s in front of it.”ĭespite how it may sound, lasers do have a low barrier of entry, meaning that even people with only basic computer knowledge are able to use them.
LIGHTSMITH LASERS FULL
Newsome says that the laser he uses - Full Spectrum Laser’s P-series CO2 laser - runs at only 100 watts, although that energy is focusing on an area roughly three thousandths of an inch in size. “So things that you don’t want to breathe - if they were to be on fire - might not want to burn.”Īnd burn things will. You’re basically vaporizing it,” he says. But Newsome does mention a word of warning with such materials. Most natural materials can be used, including plants, glass, and some stone, as can synthetic materials, including acrylic plastic. “And that’s why, you know, if there is some boring part of the process that you don’t really need your level of skill to do, you just need it to be done so you can get on to the more skilled part, then that’s really where it helps,” Newsome says. It’s when it comes to making multiple copies that the laser shines, though. He says that, given the time it takes to create the file for the laser, it could take about the same amount of time to make a single product via laser as it does by hand. For one, Newsome’s laser work tends to start in the digital realm. That’s not to say that laser-versus-hand is analogous to John Henry’s hammer battling a steam engine. “The traditional woodworking and lasers are kind of opposite in their approach,” Seth Newsome says, “and the woodworking is really patient and deliberate and, you know, if you’re into it, it can be kind of meditative.”īut lasers allow for a quicker process, and “one minute it’s just something in your head, and less than an hour later you can hold multiple things in your hands,” Newsome says, “and that’s really attractive, ’cause then you can iterate your idea really rapidly.” But it turns out that lasers and woodworking make for strange bedfellows. He got into woodworking, while also becoming exposed to alternative methods of artistry, and later roped in his brother, as well. The roots of this upbringing soon bore fruit about five years ago, when Seth started becoming involved in local makers’ spaces like TechShop and The Crucible. Their dad was a carpenter, so Seth grew up surrounded by the tools of the trade. But at San Francisco’s Lightsmith Laser, lasers have taken on other, more creative and artistic uses.Īnd sadly, there are no sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads.įounded by brothers Seth and Dave Newsome, Lightsmith Laser opened up a little more than a year ago. And they’re probably not something most people would think of in terms of artistic expression, in the same company as brushes, paints, or canvases.
Lasers - be they beams, blasters, or pointers - are often thought of as tools for destroying, not creating.
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