Sep 4, 2026 · 1 hr 9 min · 15 segments
As the calendar turns a leaf into September, Elliot Williams is joined by Jenny List for our weekly look at all things Hackaday. In the news, our retrocomputing competition is well under way, but…
Elliot WilliamsHost
Jenny ListHost
He's got two fairly beefy blue laser units mounted on the side of a 3D printer head.
For one where he smooths the top layer of 3D prints, he's got a third one pointing straight down.
30 watts of blue laser in addition to the moving print head on this 3d printer the idea being to see if you can get rid of layer lines by smoothing them out by like re-melting them after the fact the last one i thought was a really neat idea because it was aiming to make 3d prints much stronger by reheating the layer right before you put another layer down on it in the z height so that they fuse better together and he got actually measurable improvements out of that this one aims to be kind of more cosmetic it's just you know getting rid of the layer lines What's neat about this video is that this sounds like a really easy idea.
This sounds like, well, just put some lasers on it and we'll melt it and it'll be fine.
And most of this is the kind of stuff you stumble on when you're actually doing it.
Yeah, he screws lasers to it and to quote him, after describing the mechanical aspects, let's talk about the pain, the software.
And so the question is, what's the algorithm you're going to use here? And his first try was, which he calls standard, was to remelt the outside of the perimeter after every layer.
and then smooth them together with a slightly diffuser laser path and then would do four or five layers and then do that again.
This of course runs into all sorts of problems like if you're not just doing the top layer things that you've printed subsequently can get in the way and so his example is like a cat that has a tail that comes up and the tail casts a shadow on the main part of the body so he can't get in there and laser that smooth.
but other things like bridges or steep overhangs will prevent your lasers from getting into all the nooks and crannies.
And he also mentions that as the model gets bigger, you need more laser power.
So your software has to think about how to get more power to kind of a bigger model.
This all ends up being really difficult to figure out, but he's got some pretty good looking results.
You can see where it changed from one chunk to the next, but within chunk, they're actually reasonably smooth.
He's got two fairly beefy blue laser units mounted on the side of a 3D printer head.
For one where he smooths the top layer of 3D prints, he's got a third one pointing straight down.
30 watts of blue laser in addition to the moving print head on this 3d printer the idea being to see if you can get rid of layer lines by smoothing them out by like re-melting them after the fact the last one i thought was a really neat idea because it was aiming to make 3d prints much stronger by reheating the layer right before you put another layer down on it in the z height so that they fuse better together and he got actually measurable improvements out of that this one aims to be kind of more cosmetic it's just you know getting rid of the layer lines What's neat about this video is that this sounds like a really easy idea.
This sounds like, well, just put some lasers on it and we'll melt it and it'll be fine.
And most of this is the kind of stuff you stumble on when you're actually doing it.
Yeah, he screws lasers to it and to quote him, after describing the mechanical aspects, let's talk about the pain, the software.
And so the question is, what's the algorithm you're going to use here? And his first try was, which he calls standard, was to remelt the outside of the perimeter after every layer.
and then smooth them together with a slightly diffuser laser path and then would do four or five layers and then do that again.
This of course runs into all sorts of problems like if you're not just doing the top layer things that you've printed subsequently can get in the way and so his example is like a cat that has a tail that comes up and the tail casts a shadow on the main part of the body so he can't get in there and laser that smooth.
but other things like bridges or steep overhangs will prevent your lasers from getting into all the nooks and crannies.
And he also mentions that as the model gets bigger, you need more laser power.
So your software has to think about how to get more power to kind of a bigger model.
This all ends up being really difficult to figure out, but he's got some pretty good looking results.
You can see where it changed from one chunk to the next, but within chunk, they're actually reasonably smooth.
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