This may be a dumb question, but I’m still pretty new to laser cutting and even knees to Snapmaker V2.0, but… I’m trying to laser cut some 1/4” wood and I know that running the laser cutter without multiple passes barely makes a dent. I guess my question is… when you have multi-pass on, does the laser module drop down after each pass so that the laser doesn’t get out of focus with where it’s touching the wood? You know, since on the second pass, the distance between the laser and the wood would be slightly more unless it did move down after each pass? Sorry if that was incoherent, but if anyone know what I’m talking about and has any ideas about if, your input would be very much appreciated.
Thank you, in advance, so much for your time and help,
Under multi-pass you choose the number of passes.
The pass depth is how much it lowers on each pass.
Generally set the pass depth to the thickness divided by the number of passes.
So 2mm thick with 4 passes, pass depth to .5, 10 passes .2mm
BTW, you can remove the lens hood to keep it from running into your material.
However, 1/4" thick is probably not possible with SM laser. 4mm is probably as much as you can hope for and 3mm more likely. Probably need to use cnc.
-S
Hey, thanks so much for your response… that’s VERY helpful info to know. I actually misspoke in my post… it’s not 1/4”, i think it’s actually supposed to be 1/8”, but using calipers it comes out to 3.3mm. Before I had made my post and I was trying to cut through, I had left what was already there by default (0.6) for how much it drops with each pass and first tried with 7 passes and then with 10. Strangely, though, both times it seemed like it came out with the exact same result… it cut through like 98 or 99% of the thickness, but left enough that I had to kind of break the parts out, which caused some minor chipping and things like that. I would have thought that if it came that close with 7 passes at 0.6, then 10 passes at 0.6 would have been overkill, if anything, yanno? Any idea why I may have gotten the results that I did? Again… thank you so much for your time and help.
-peter
I have the exact same problem where I can’t seem to get through that last bit. I pretty much have to double the number of passes as the guide to get htrough. I believe i am calibratedcorrectly and my lines are clean. Only guess for me is a dirty laser lens. I have used a Qtip and alcohol in past but haven’t noticed a difference. I would love to understand what I am doing wrong.
In regard to wood, 3mm is definitely as thick as you ever want to go with present SM2 laser. Technically 2.8mm I think. I settled on 2mm for stiffness and cuttability. I have 1.5, 2 and 3mm wood and I am over recalibrating every time I switch.