Laser Etching my XPS 13 Laptop: Orphan Black style

   Sam Nicholls    No Comments yet    Uncategorised

Earlier today I got pretty cross with bioinformatics and our current state of tooling:

In an attempt to make myself feel better, I decided to stick my laptop in a laser cutter to give it a makeover1. Here is the exciting adventure-cross-how-to:

Pew pew, I stuck my laptop in a laser cutter

Although I had faith that this wouldn’t be a disaster (despite my screaming while pressing the Start button), but I’m actually pretty surprised with the quality of the result, which was beyond my expectations. Tom and I plan to investigate using the laser for engraving all sorts of other odds and ends in future.


  1. You should recognise the pattern if you’re an Orphan Black fan! Cosima and I can be laptop buddies.