I have read through the laser manual a couple of times and maybe I am just not getting it. I’m confused on how the machine gets told whether it is cutting through stock or or merely engraving/burning an image onto the surface.
For example, I will be laser engraving an image onto a piece of wood. The wood is 14 mm thick. Although I don’t know why that matters as I only want the image burned into the surface.
Is the laser going to burn through the 14mm… or because it is an image file, it knows only to engrave the surface?
OR… Does is the depth of cut set by the “material thickness” setting and I need to set that as the depth of cut no matter what the actual thickness of the material?
Only vector is for cutting. If you use an svg file it will follow the path of the file and cut on it.
The confusion is that vector can also be used for images, especially if you turn ‘fill’ to on.
There are two different depths for laser cutting.
One is for the height or thickness of the workpiece. If you’re using auto-focus (which is kind of misnamed) you’re telling it where to put the head to be properly focused on the material.
The other is pass depth which you set in Luban. This allows the focus to change and adjust as you cut deeper into your workpiece. As far as 14mm, you’ll be lucky if it goes through more than 3mm of the right kind of plywood.
You’ll need to play with power and speed depending on what kind of material you’re trying to engrave on. There are some examples on the SM website, but I’ve found that I just have to go through trial and error because different materials and woods and pieces of wood vary so much how they react. Technically you could cut through a piece with any of the settings - it would just be a matter of time and efficiency. I’ve used all three, vector, B&W, grayscale at various times for different looks. I usually create small 25x25 squares and then run them with different settings and selections and then figure out which is giving me the look I like. Then I run the setting I like best with different power settings to hone it in more.
Oh…OK, so your saying that if something is to be cut out, then I would use “Vector”. If your engraving, then “black and white” or “gray scale” is used?
Right now it is running an engraving but it is coming out pretty light. What setting do you use to make the images darker? I looks darker in the preview.
To cut use vector.
Engraving any of the 3.
Each one gives different results.
To darken increase power and/or slow down speed. In greyscale you can increase the dwell time. You can also do multiple passes. For engraving set the pass depth to zero.
Preview, (especially with grayscale because it just ends up as dots) really doesn’t do a good job of showing what the final result is going to be.
There are image settings in the editor in Lubanthat you can adjust for contrast and amount of black. There’s also a certain amount of image correction that you can (need) to do before importing to Luban. Generally laser does better with higher contrast images.
If you share your artwork and what type of material you’re trying to laser we can help give some help with what you’re trying to do.
But let me ask one more question: during the laser process, I can adjust the speed of the laserat the machine. When I attempt that, the display says I am at 100%. When I look at Luban, it says I am at 35%. So, would I be correct if I assumed that if I set Luban to 100% before creating the G-code, I could then adjust the speed (to a lower speed) on the machine display?
You can adjust work speed (how fast head moves while carving) in Luban. That’s a number from 1 to 3000 representing how many millimeters per minute it’s going to move while the laser is operating. (Jog speed is how fast when laser isn’t firing)
You can also adjust laser power by % in luban.
On the SM controller you can adjust the power in % and you can adjust the work speed - either faster or slower - again by %.
-S