Finally had some time at my hands to try a real PCB circuit. Will do a more detailed post on this later, when I maybe have full success. Until now, I can say:
- A small PCB of 2,5 x 2.5 cm size, holding 5 through-hole components, i.e. low-moderate complexity, lasered with 500 mm/min and 16 passes, 0.2 mm isolation width takes 2:19 hours. Better than I thought, but still slow.
- With above parameters, it was too sooty already (even with hardpaper), and getting the soot out of 0.2 mm slits, is painful to impossible. Isolation is not given.
- I used KiCAD to create the PCB and FlatCAM to generate toolpathes for lasering a reference frame (for work origin repeatibility), isolation routing, hole drilling with different diameters and cutting out the final board.
- GCode for laser needed a bit of modification
- Did a second try with 1000 mm/min and 25 passes (1:52 hrs), which in my previous tests was a very good result, but then (in the other test) with a 0.7 mm gap. With the 0.2 mm gap it left copper, so no isolation either, but this time for the opposite reason. Improved GCode here by including inline power (more modifications necessary), which may be overkill/not really necessary at such speeds.
So some good results, but no full success.
I think I will give it another try with 0.04 mm gap width, 1000 mm/min, 26 passes (meaning ~4 hours job…).
It is a bit frustrating how much fine-tuning this means, and I’m feeling like I’ll in the end not go down that route when creating PCB prototypes, but perhaps better create a reliable way to mill the PCBs.
My verdict would now be: Yes, doing PCB is technically possible with the 2W, but it is not practical.
@Dowser any success with the 40W?