10W First Impressions (Contribute Yours)

Ah yes, I need to put my rocket league rank/car on that sample aluminum

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:3 Black Anodized Aluminum.

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The new Power Output on the new 10W Module looks promising.

I’m more interested in your “job holding” clamps, would you be kind enough to share the design.

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That looks amazing! Do you perhaps have a file or settings list for this so I can try this as well? I think I might have some black anodized aluminum pieces here for testing. So far I have etched in coated aluminum for some presents but actually etching in anodized aluminum is still on my list. Last thing I tried it didn’t do shading very well

Has anyone attempted a ‘manual’ focus setup, for example to try and laser etch the backing side of a glass tile focused “thru” the thicknness, with the 10w and the new firmware? Thinking of trying it myself and paranoid about crashing the head into the part… I think it was @sdj544 who talked about doing that a lot with the 1.6W laser…

My corners are here: Printables
The others are here: Laser bed clip for Snapmaker 2.0 by mrwolfe - Thingiverse (I printed these in TPU)

@Knagie I used 400mm/min, 100% power grayscale, which isn’t available yet, I’m doing testing.

OK, so I tried it myself. Using Manual mode I moved the airflow housing to touch the bed beside the tile (typical thickness, about 1/4 inch perhaps), moved it back up maybe 0.5mm to pretend I was focusing at the interior top of the backing, behind the glass. Moving to set the work zero corner, the airflow duct cleared the top glass face of the tile by maybe 2-3mm at most.

Did some vector engraved text at different speeds, 100% power. Both inner and outer outlines of the text were drawn. All four of these engraved all the way thru, the first 2 (starting from the bottom) heating the glass enough that it actually has stress fractures, the last is less perfectly thru the backing along all the outlines:

Better angle to show the stress fractures:

Light thru view (somewhat). Both top rows would show more with a backlight than this pic would indicate, I didn’t move it off the rail enough sorry.

And lastly, the ink pigments BLASTED right off the backside onto my print bed! Wow.

Based on this I think the 300mm/sec was about optimal for this particular tile color and thickness (almost clear glass, half-silvered white/blue/green pigments, white final backing), especially if you planned to either black paint the backside after to maybe increase the contrast, or backlight.

Nice work! I’ve been interested in testing tile and mirrors. If you nail down some settings, feel free to share.

Well, the settings are IN the text used… :wink:

100% 300mm/sec seems pretty safe and for sure thru. If you’re after just blackening the pigment but not blasting it off would obviously have to be far less. The “edges” of the actual cut seen from the back are pretty black, so I think that would be possible.

I might try another sequence of speeds and/or dial down the power a little too tomorrow on the next area of the same tile. Doing some design work for another tile I’d like to be more than just a throwaway. I think a tile in a wood stand would make a nice looking desk nameplate. “rtrski”, Master of the PewPew, hah, I kid…

giphy

Well that WAS my first subject (btw, 6mm ply is not really strong enough to use as a bottle opener, or maybe I just scaled that down to the test piece too much…)

Flag Stone…


Not sure how well the “Flag” will hold up under weather, it was only 1 pass at 100% laser/workspeed
The other was a little deeper, 2 passes at 25% work speed, 100% laser.

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Looks awesome, I really should try some stone. :slight_smile:

IKEA Ordning timer

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Can you please share the link of the first image, The Z with the Sword that has cut through it.
Looks dope, Wanna try that on the back of a “marble phone case” with the 1.6W Laser Module.

I did a quick experiment with my new 10W laser. This is 10% power 3000 mm/min.

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I’ve added a few more power and speed options to the glass tile test.
Looking at it harder I think EVERY one of these options is burning thru the backing almost uniformly, only where the paint is darkest blue is it maybe not getting thru ‘as cleanly’ or in a narrower line. Uncertain how this backing is made, if they do paint stripes first then glob that general white back atop that, so the blue is a different material and/or thicker. Or it just reflects this laser wavelength a bit more maybe?

I did have the pigments and whatever that backing is on the tile blasted onto the laser table again.

Only the very first two cuts (100% power, 200 or 250 mm/min) resulted in heat stress fractures, none of these new ones. As before, the text is the setting used.

Front view:


Back view:

Since the snapmaker uses a blue diode laser, the blue pigment reflects the blue light vs absorbing it (and thus the energy). That’s why it seems the blue takes a bit more to get through.

I tried doing some engraving on resin filled burl wood with the 1.6. Some of the stuff was mixed/swirled colors - blue, white, red. Would work great on the darker stuff and the wood, but any time it was passing over the blue I would get zero results.

I think you can up the speed a lot and still have the same effectiveness. When I was doing tests with mirror backing and through clear glass with a silver gray backing I’m pretty sure I was running 200-300 with the 1.6.

-S