A long time ago, a cheap Chinese laser cutter came with electronics that were, frankly, crap. Enter LAOS Laser — an open source project started by a group of makers who built replacement hardware for exactly these machines. The upgrade happened as a group effort, with everyone bringing a bit of knowledge to the table. At the end, everybody went home with a working laser cutter for somewhere under €500 (optimistically speaking). A great example of what a community of makers can pull off together.

LAOS Laser as a project is no more, but when the opportunity came to buy a new compatible board and do a solo upgrade, it worked. First try. The machine now runs LightBurn over a proper GRBL setup — which makes it about ten times more capable than the stock configuration ever was. A big win, and proof that keeping old hardware alive with open source tooling is absolutely worth the effort.