I built a home made CO2 laser that would work. It's only 40 Watts but it can cut through thin plywood, luon, basla, and fabric as well.It can also score granite marble etc. I had an old pair of jeans I cut the legs off with the laser to make a pair of shorts. It worked ok, but this is before I had a XY table so I had to move the jeans by hand. (dangerous!) The trick is to focus the beam to a very small spot. At that point its soo hot (>3000 F) that the fabric just vaporizes and there is no chance for it to singe or catch on fire especially if the beam is traveling. I am just finishing an XY table with a flying beam design to go with the laser. It's controlled by a AVR microcontoller that talks to a PC through a serial port, and will interpret standard "NC G-Codes". Then I can play with cutting patterns in all sorts of things. A YAG laser might work too and there is a lot less plumbing. If your intrested go to sams laser faq http://repairfaq.org/sam/lasersam.htm and you will find more information about building fixing using lasers than you ever tought. Also you can post to ALT.LASERS Just BE CAREFUL if you want to do this, lasers and their equipment can put a real hurting on you.
And remember "Don't stare into the beam with the remaining eye!"
As this is only your second time working with electronics, I'll try to keep my terminology simple.
It's hard to see exactly how you have wired up the sensor and LED, but I can take a guess. (If I'm wrong, then everything below probably makes no sense).
The sensor is connected between + power and the Arduino input, while the LED is connected between - power and the Arduino input.
When you press the sensor, electrical current can flow from the + side of the power the Arduino sensor pin, charging it up and giving it a high voltage. Current also flows through the LED, causing it to light up.
Now, what happens When you release the sensor? The electrical charge inside the Arduino sensor pin which was giving it a high voltage, will now flow as current through the LED to - power, bringing the voltage down, so that the Arduino sees you've let go.
But what happens if you don't have an LED in there? The electrical charge in the Arduino sensor pin has nowhere to go, and so it just stays there, and the voltage doesn't change.
The reason the Arduino's sensor pin behaves like this is because it behaves like a tiny capacitor. It can store a small amount of electrical charge, and thus 'remember' the voltage that was placed on them by the sensor.
So, how can you fix it? You'll need to have somewhere for this charge to flow. If not an LED, then a resistor should do. Any value between 1k and 1000k will probably work fine.
Best Answer
This sounds like a broadly interpreted term. But in the context of processors we (by we I mean my work environment of a major processor manufacturer) use this term to refer the whole infrastructure intended for a specific purpose, such as Data Fabric - which is consisting of the interconnect, control and arbitration logic involved in moving data of different types and representations between different processor blocks. As reference I could find the AMD Infinity and Scalable Control Fabric description. Citation: