Eric HertzAlright, so, those last two logs might've been just a wee bit overthought. Here's the new setup:
I dunno how I didn't see it before, DVD drives come in nice boxes with darn-near perfectly-square sides. Gravity can be your friend, too! Remove that focusing-lens altogether, and the focal-length is darn-near perfect.
Also: weeks of hard work, and grbl 0.9j now runs on PIC32, and more, including: it has been abstracted for porting to other architectures with relative ease, and now can directly-drive H-bridge inputs (rather'n step/dir) with single-stepping or PWM-micro-stepping.
With 16x microstepping, the HaD logo takes just about 1 minute to etch.
Next steps: design a mini PCB, laser-toner, etch!
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One note: removing the lens can have different effects depending on the drive. For some, such as yours I'd guess, the beam is partly focused by one small lens, and then another lens just above the DVD focuses it right close on the disk's surface. In other drives, there is just one lens doing the job; removing it will get you an un-columnated beam as shown in the cover pic of this very project. So luck of the draw as to whether or not it works as well as yours! Can't wait to see a PCB :)
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