This is bare aluminum, at least as far as I can tell. I had ordered some painted aluminum cards a long time ago in a variety of colours and had no idea what to do with these bare ones… now I know. I had tested the 1.6W and it couldn’t touch it.
Edit: Power 100%, speed 100mm/min.
Edit2: It’s actially in the metal. Running a fingernail across it, catches easily.
EDIT3: Did another quick test, this was just using the default settings for “Black Anodized Aluminum” for line engraving.
I do not have the new module yet (expected in March), but following the Facebook reports here’s a warning I’d like to convey: The screws to fix the new head to the linear module that come with the new head are M4x8, while the old screws were M4x10. These 2 mm additional length may damage the fan in the new laser module, so that it cannot spin anymore, resulting in an overheat warning. So make sure to use the screws provided with the new head.
I can’t be sure, it’ll require more testing on other objects, but it’s nice that the 10W laser can do something with these things. I’ll try washing one in various chemicals to see if there is a coating, I can get rid of it (or hit it with sandpaper, but this would ruin the finish).
Tried it on bare aluminium with no coating. Did half of it with a black sharpie coating to see if it did anything. Full laser power 80 mm speed 1 pass. Did where the sharpie is a barely visible picture and where there was no sharpie there is nothing. So for the result we saw above here i think there was something of a coating present.
funny now i see the picture it is visible so it did something but it is barely visible by eye.
In the last picture on the left was with sharpie done at 10W 200mm speed. On the right is half sharpie and half bare at 85mm speed
So I received my 10W yesterday and figured I’d look up any information on what presets exist for materials. I did find this one when I started with the 1.6W version some time ago but was wondering if something like this exists with 10W version or if this one will be updated with 10W as well, it was a handy reference page for new materials.
So far only engraved and cut some MDF (seems to work fine with the 10W one)
I sanded at it and it was less spectacular, so yes there was a coating. Still neat that a clear protective coating gave it enough energy to etch into the metal.
Make sure you set the settings to use the 10w laser. If not I think the presets would be for the 1600mw laser.
–edit–
I just looked through the luban source, seems that in https://github.com/Snapmaker/Luban/commit/0ca918ae6f93fe9eee76ed0f23c9dd90a3d62516 the default work speed for aluminum vector engraving was changed from 200 to 3500. Not sure if that’s just a fat fingering (e.g. it should have been 350) or what, but I’m guessing 200 is closer to the “correct” value since @gpt1plon was getting nothing, and if anything @Skreelink was seeing too much engraving.
At the moment, I am still doing tests, but the best option and it is almost perfect would be with:
Black Acrylic
cutting 5 mm
work speed 100 mm
laser power 50 %
Calibration went seamlessly, after finish showed I think 30.3mm height? (I have the laser bed currently just sitting on my 3d print heated bed plus spring plate, with clips holding the 3 bed pieces together and a little blue tape to the edges to make sure it doesn’t shift. Have a 60mil thick magnet sheet on the way and know I’ll have to recalibrate once I glue that to the back of the cutting bed.) I did not put the ‘hood’ on the lens to start with. A250 in enclosure, and yes wearing safety goggles from Thor Labs as well.
6mm (1/4) baltic birch ply, first attempted part (bottom of stack) was barely penetrating in a few places, you can see light thru the cut line if you hold it up but the majority of the back did not even show the burn. Second try only took a few Xacto traces to separate cleanly, and the little circles poked right out with a small hex.
Started with the defaults for 5mm basswood (100% strength, 180mm/min, 1 cut ), dialed down movement to 150mm/min for first failed try, then second try adjusted to 85% of that speed on touchscreen so 1 pass, 100%, ~125mm/min cutting speed actual is what succeeded. (I didn’t want to use the 8mm cut default as I thought 2 full paths cuts might be doing an awful lot of burn into the bed, but maybe that would’ve been a better choice?) Used the ‘Auto’ calibration for thickness and to set the laser starting height, (which did accurately report it as 5.96mm thick) and then manually set starting corner point. I see what people say about Auto calibration requiring the item to be cut extend into that center position, do wish in firmware we could adjust the thickness check position as well as the work zero.
Those were 2.25 x 5 inch scrap pieces (so about 57 x 127 mm) and it took just a couple minutes, I wasn’t even paying attention to time really, it was so fast. More focused (hah) on how much smoke built up inside the enclosure and whether my cheesy little carbon filter box would keep the smoke detector from going off (it succeeded, but I can still smell it fairly well.)
MUCH more seamless for a first try than the last time I tried the 1.6W laser many a moon ago. Only thing I’m not sure of is trying to focus “thru” something (laser backside of a glass tile with a patterned backing) expect I’ll have to use the manual method. I am now going to see what else I can abuse!!
I see that too now, mucho thanks @nivekmai for catching that!!
I dropped speed to 250 to engrave my tag and it worked pretty well! (100% power, 1 pass, auto thickness and focus cal again). Maybe 200 would’ve gone a bit ‘deeper’ into the anodize but the lines are clean and white. We’ll see how they hold up to some wear.
Graphics are an “Elite Dangerous” Courier ship ‘cartoon’ vector, edited down to just the outlines (credit goes to this artist, I’ll be sure to post a nod to him where he’ll see it, and he did offer personal use not commercial sale rights.)
And on other side the ‘Exploration Rank 9’ badge award for the same computer game, from Elite Dangerous assets , also fair use not commercial re-sale rights (also ‘Fan generated’)
I’ll try washing one in various chemicals to see if there is a coating, I can get rid of it (or hit it with sandpaper, but this would ruin the finish).
