Balsa wood laser settings?

What settings do you use with your laser for balsa wood? I wanted to cut some stuff out, but I don’t want to overkill it.
Like what is your settings for

  • vector
  • grayscale
  • B&W
  • cutting

hey, i´m sorry, haven´t cut wood yet.

maybe this thread is interesting for you:
https://forum.snapmaker.com/t/laser-cutting-settings/3243/4?u=xchrisd

Trail and error or searching the forum is the right way :+1:

I have been cutting out 1/16 and 1/32 parts for balsa flying models with good success. I use Inkscape to trace the PDF plan. One challenge is fitting as many parts as possible onto the 5X5 work table. I also have been marking the parts with a lower power pass, using a vectorized text file. In Inkscape, I do one layer with the PDF file, the next layer with the traced parts, and a third layer with the text.

I then group the parts from the trace and text layers into 5x5 groups. Lastly, I save a layer file and its matching text file. I import these files into Luban and use the scaling tool to get them to the correct size. I note the horizontal scaling factor, and use it for all subsequent sheets of parts…this ensures everything is to the same scale.

After importing and scaling the trace file, I import and scale the text file. For 1/16 inch soft balsa I used 400mm/min, 65% power, 1 pass. This gave me a clean cut with minimum charring. For the text file I used 430 mm/min, 30% power, 1 pass. Gave me a readable part number on each part. It is important to load the trace file first, then the text file so that if the part shifts after being cut out, the text will already hav been printed as Laban appears to execute the tasks in the reverse order they were loaded.

For 1/32 inch balsa, I used 500 mm/min, 60% power, 1 pass to get a clean cut. I tried cutting 1/8 inch balsa using 400 mm/min, 60% power, 3 passes dropping .6mm per pass.

I have not successfully cut 1/4” balsa. I tried 500 mm/min, 100% power, 12 passes, but still didn’t cut through.

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