While there are plenty of self-contained mobile-friendly laser engravers on the market today, most don't come equipped with a trap door.

Ordinarily, when we need gears, we pop open a McMaster catalog or head to the KHK website. Some of the more adventurous may even laser cut or 3D print them. But what about machining them yourself?

Today, nearly all precision laser cutting of metals and non-metals is performed with tools equipped with either fiber lasers or ultrashort pulse (USP) lasers, or sometimes both. In this article, we ...