Before I begin turning slate coasters into dust, does anyone have any advice as far as settings. I have the 40w and 1064nm lasers. This is the image I am going to use.
There are several posts in the forum mentioning slate and settings. Probably more if you expand the search results. I got those just searching slate.
Make sure you post back with your results.
None of the other posts give any settings except for one with the 10w module. It’s a starting point.
Here are my test results on an unfinished slate coaster.
The laser gave a flame error on 1200. But for the 40w, speed of 12000 mm/min at 100% gives a nice look. But 6600 mm/min gave a good look and depth. The 9300 at 100% looked the best wet.
In this the image had too much fine detail.
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Which laser did you use in the end? If you have a very detailed image to engrave, the 1064 nm Laser might be the better choice: It has a much smaller focus point size compared to all the 450 nm lasers, so it can engrave very fine details. But admittedly, I do not knopw if the IR laser ca do slate - I’d assume it can, but just guessing.
I will give the 1064 a shot later today
You can get some fine details out of the blue diodes as well, the main thing is you have to tune the power level down. Slate sort of bubbles when hit with too much power, making a spot larger than laser spot (kinda like wood). Looking at your test, you’re still getting that bright white at the fastest speed/lowest power (and melting it with lower speed/high power). So do another test with power between 10-50%. The 1.6W blue diode was able to do slate fairly quickly and it’s “only” 16% of the 10W.
Results are in. Unfinished material.1064nm 2100 mm/min. Power left to right, top to bottom, 20, 40,60,80%
80% detail is amazing.
The only issue is when the job finished it engraved a thin line under it. Using lightburn and the job finishes and stops then it does the line after which lightburn shows it busy and has to be restarted.
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In lightburn, make sure these two options are checked;
That should solve the finish line underneath.
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Thanks, I’ll check them next time I turn everything back on.
Almost forgot, also add these two lines to your start gcode block;
G0 S0
G1 S0
Just to ensure the laser power is set to zero on both G0 moves and G1 moves. Having a value on G0 moves is likely what causes the line.
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That worked for stopping the line. It still goes to busy at the end, burned a small mark next to the coaster and I have to restart lightburn.
The coasters came out nice though. I’m going to make a centering jig.
I used the center as the origin to get as close as possible.
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On the second one it drew the line right at the bottom.
Lightburn shows this
This first 5 lines are in by default.
@Skreelink I found your process for setting up lightburn. I will try it out.
Good luck, make sure to read through the later posts to ensure you have the most relevant and latest info.