On the 3D printed sculpture is a little “stringing,” or little hairs, connecting the two sections of the sculpture. Stringing is usually caused by a setting problem – he probably didn’t have the retraction set quite right on the 3D printer.
Because Kevin wants a cleaner look, he has to remove the strings. Instead of trying to pull off all the strings by hand or using wire cutters to snip off the strings, Kevin realized he might have just the tool to help.
Kevin opens a small metal case and takes out a laser. “It’s not a toy,” he says. “It’s not a pointer.” This is a real laser. It lights matches on fire. It burst balloons. It lights wood on fire. If you shine it on your hand you have about 2 seconds before you feel pain. This is a real tool that even comes with a pair of ruby glasses to help protect your eyes simply because it’s so strong.
Kevin then shows a screenshot of where he purchased the laser. He shows it’s not very expensive. Let’s see how it works!
Kevin is wearing the ruby glasses – from a safety aspect, yes, you really do need to wear the safety glasses because the laser’s backscatter will damage your eyes if you don’t have protection.
Kevin points to some strings at the top of the shorter section and shoots the laser beam at the top right of where the strings attach.
After about 15 seconds, not much has happened. That’s pretty disappointing. Still, Kevin says the laser is fun to play with. He’s taken it outside at night and shined it on a nearby mountain and on the stars. SAFETY CAUTION: ALWAYS AVOID AIRCRAFT!
So the laser is kind of fun to play with, but not quite as strong as he had hoped. What did he do about the strings?
Kevin shows a soldering iron he’s modified by replacing the soldering tip with a blade. The blade isn’t sharp, but it gets hot, so that filament doesn’t have a chance! You can cut the filament and even make it molten and sculpt with it a little.
Kevin thanks viewers for watching and recommends hitting that subscribe button if you haven’t already and stick around for another moment and see him at a quiet moment ….