So now my question: Is there any best practice here to âfixâ the wood on the platform?
The little rubber plugs are not helping with this.
May I do make some other mistakes?
I cut with this settings: 100% power, 80mm/min 11x times with 0,25mm offset.
I tried a lot of other settings too, it works from time to time but as you can see in the image, sometimes he just wont cut trough.
thanks in advance for any help.
this is my first bigger project with the laser so please consider me as a noob.
Youâre cutting 3mm material with 2.75mm worth of depth, maybe bump that to 13 passes for more depth. You can remove the threaded shield on the end of the laser if itâs bumping into the material.
Itâs also worth noting that material does not look like plain wood despite what your title suggests, that looks like plywood which has glue in it that this particular laser has a very hard time vaporizing.
Iâm assuming if you had the woodworking tools to flatten it you wouldâve already.
Personally I use solid wood for engraving like maple and pine that I flatten through a drum sander. It does help having it perfectly flat. For cutting I use sheets of basswood.
Later this year the more powerful laser would be helpful as the glue in plywood is very difficult for the 1.6W to cut.
Itâs worth noting that 3mm basswood cuts in two passes.
I tried a lot in the last week. I can not get a decent cut with what I got.
Sometimes it just went fine and cuts perfectly trough it. The other day it just scratches the surface and will not cut half of the material with the same settings.
I read a lot in this forum with similar problems and tried everything.
I updated the firmware, used basswood instead of plywood.
Now trying 100% plain wood with no glue or anything else.
I tried to do a lot more passes than it should need and also faster and slower and different z offsets. nothing works great.
I would love to read working setups from other people here. Like what wood with which settings works 9/10 timesâŠ
I did the calibration many times, looks fine. He auto-choose the right line, am I right? Or can i do something about it? Thats the last one after the firmware update:
At all this are my steps:
calibrate (not everytime but more than 5 times now)
measure the right hight from the wood (2,7mm)
applicate a very thin self sticking foil to reduce the burned borders
make a camera capture
create the tool g-code with vektor graphic (actual settings: 75mm/min 100% Power, 8x 0,42 z offset)
â 0,42z * 8 = 3,36mm offset, more than it should be!
start lasering
It takes forever and the outcome differs from this:
That calibration is about 3 lines too high, it could be a lot better. The settings look ok, but maybe try slowing down the travel speed
I made a material test grid that was a bunch of 10 mm squares where I tried a whole bunch of settings quickly. I think I ended up using two passes at 30 mm per minute
The thinnest line is not the one in the middle where it should be. Itâs off to the right from the center by three lines. I believe from left to right the head goes low to high but itâs been forever since I did a calibration so maybe itâs high to low and itâs actually three lines too low.
The auto calibration routine is not selecting the thinnest line apparently, something that Iâve had issues with.
Go in to the touch screen settings and put the calibration mode in the manual and do a manual routine. When you do the manual calibration you need to select the thinnest line.
Itâs often visually easier to instead of focusing on the thinnest lines find two lines that are equal with about 10 apart that are fat. Then go to the middle between the people with lines and that will be the correct line
For example here Iâve marked the left and right lines that I think look about the same width and then marked to the middle between them which youâll see is to the right of Center by 2 to 3 ticks
I did the manual calibration and took the second line right from the middle.
Then I tried to cut again with the settings that worked before a few times:
100% power, 95mm/min, 8 passes with 0,42mm offset.
You donât have to wait for the whole job to finish to tell if its cutting or not. If the first couple passes arenât cutting then waiting for it to finish is just a waste of time.
So I did a lot of research and tests and want to share it with other who have similiar problems.
I did not found yet the optimal solution but a way to at least archive what I wanted.
First of all, it all goes and falls with the material as brent mentioned first here. I tried plywood from local stores and a lot more from the internet.
Basswood and pine works the best right now. but it hardly depends on each (!) sheet. Some sheets from the same package have another result with the same properties as the next one. I am not sure if this is because the glue is different or whatever.
This is what I have done before testing:
Firmware update
Calibrating the Laser as Brent suggested
(@brent113 the Calibration is fine and works good now, it was somehow the wood who did thisâŠ)
Then I created a Testproject within Luban where I cutted 10 different squares out of my material on different sheets.
Some of worked on every plate others not. The 10 is the best choice for me and this material at the moment. On another sheet of wood from another supplier the 5 works very well too!
may this helps someone who struggle the same way as me.
If I find the perfect match iâll update this.
