The journey of Fabulaser Mini: designing, making and documenting of an open source, Fablab produced, laser cutter

With the ability to quickly create prototypes and being necessary to run Fab Academy, laser cutters are the workhorse in every Fablab. Furthermore, because of their ease of usage, they are often the most used machines and the first to be approached by inexperienced makers. However, laser cutters are currently an expensive purchase for Fablabs, usually being the most expensive machine in their inventory and mainly available as commercial closed source products. In the concept of Fablab 2.0, the machines used in the lab are replicated by the machines present in it, allowing the “transition from buying a Lab to making a Lab” (Neil Gershenfeld, 2022). The making of machines instead of buying, implies several advantages beyond the machine capabilities itself, such as open source inclusiveness, distributed development, the learning of the processes for hardware replication, the understanding of how the machine works, customization and more. To jointly address laser cutting needs of Fablabs and Fablabs 2.0 research, Fabulaser Mini was developed by Daniele Ingrassia in 2021 at InMachines Ingrassia GmbH (Germany). It has been conceptualised as a small format laser cutter, prioritising open source design, replicability, affordability, performance and safety. To fulfil the purpose of the machine replication, Liane Sayuri Honda and Marc Kohlen joined the team to develop the assembly manual of Fabulaser Mini. With a BOM (Bill Of Materials) of about 2000€ at the time of writing, Fabulaser Mini has been replicated in more than 7 machine-building workshops and can be produced using standard Fablab equipment. It is the first open source laser cutter in the Fablab inventory, and has been used by Fab Academy students. Derived from Fabulaser Mini, OSLK Small Laser, is currently part of the Open Lab Starter Kit, an open source set of machines developed within the project Fab City Hamburg, in cooperation with the Helmut Schmidt University (Germany). In this paper, the authors will describe the processes behind the development of Fabulaser Mini. The machine design will be discussed considering fabrication, performance, usability and safety. The production process will be explained, including the required machines, materials and recommendations. Information about the structuring, creation and visualisation of the assembly steps will be given, addressing the making of the assembly manual. Current achievements and facts will be used to evaluate the results.