Playing with my laser.
- Thread starter Jesse Latham
- Start date
MTBob
Well-Known Member
I love your creativity, nicely done!
Which laser do you have?
Jesse Latham
Well-Known Member
I have a 20w Atzer diode. Like most it makes me want bigger and better.
Oops, I missed the question until this morning. I've got a Gweike G2 Pro fiber laser. Seems to work pretty good, I did this to play with color a bit (sorry it's so big). I did a challenge coin also.
Picked up a 2W IR laser and started playing with it! It's the Sculpfun IR 2 that was on sale recently and I mounted it to my Anolex CNC machine. I found out that the interval makes a HUGE difference!! The IR beam is .03mm wide, so I set the interval as that and kept getting gold color. I may go back and see what setting the gold on the left was at; it's kinda neat and different! No idea how it will hold up though? Or do the gold and then a couple extra quick passes to clean up the oxide and leave it silver?
A guy on FB recommended going to .01mm interval and bam, nice black etch!
.02 is a dark brown, but .015 seems to stay black and is MUCH faster to do! These are on the tangs of some magnacut blades, .015mm interval and 200mm/min. About 12 minutes to do. The etch catches the fingernail about the same as my etching does, so it gets good depth!
Not bad for a $350 laser module!!
I was able to engrave some anodized aluminum and it removed metal, not just the anodizing. Did a key as well, too! I gotta try my Mokume (copper/nickel silver) coin that I made and see what it will do on that!
A guy on FB recommended going to .01mm interval and bam, nice black etch!
.02 is a dark brown, but .015 seems to stay black and is MUCH faster to do! These are on the tangs of some magnacut blades, .015mm interval and 200mm/min. About 12 minutes to do. The etch catches the fingernail about the same as my etching does, so it gets good depth!
Not bad for a $350 laser module!!
I was able to engrave some anodized aluminum and it removed metal, not just the anodizing. Did a key as well, too! I gotta try my Mokume (copper/nickel silver) coin that I made and see what it will do on that!
Ok, so I am running my lasers on a desktop CNC control board. I found out my CNC S value (spindle speed) was 10,000, but my laser S value was only 1,000. Oops!!! My lasers were really at 10% power when set to 100%! And I had my X speed at 500mm/min and y and 400mm/min, so that was it's max speed. 
Still playing with settings:
On a real blade that I am using as a tester:
And I put my 20W diode back onto the machine at full power. 5% trace setting leaves a tiny line in bloodwood or walnut pieces. 100%, 200mm/min cuts through 1/8" hardwoods pretty nicely!
Still playing with settings:
On a real blade that I am using as a tester:
And I put my 20W diode back onto the machine at full power. 5% trace setting leaves a tiny line in bloodwood or walnut pieces. 100%, 200mm/min cuts through 1/8" hardwoods pretty nicely!