Laser

laser hands, originally uploaded by neutralSurface.

Last night I was supposed to be finishing up a map/model which is made of plexiglas etched on the laser cutter. Down in the basement there are three laser cutters (Ebony, Brunette, and Redhead), but two of them were broken to start with. Ebony for some reason only had AutoCAD 2004 installed without the plot driver for the printer, Brunette would not turn on if you paid it, and at the time I went down, there were some random Koreans cutting out plexi name tags and crosses out. Not wanting to cause a fuss I signed up for a later time, got some food, and came back later. When I got back I had to kick some dude off the laser and I set up for an easy and quick cut. However, when I tried to focus the laser I discovered that the bed would not move up or down and instead emitted a horrible grinding noise. So what did I do? I stuffed other pieces of material and a sketchbook under the bed to prop it to a more acceptable height. My first attempt was botched and while one corner was in focus, the other parts were not, and the laser burned but did not cut. Finally, the thirty minute job took around three hours. When I went to make my final two cuts to finish my broken door model, the laser wouldn't even move into position to focus. So I packed it up and went home, leaving the 0/3 lasers working. Why is everything broken?