I just received my SM 2.0, put it together, and flawlessly used the Test files for both the 3D printer and CNC. But I have run into an issue with the Laser cutter.
I did everything that the instructions said, but the first attempt did not cut all the way through the 1.5mm plywood supplied.
I tried again manually adjusting the number of passes to 3 instead of the default 2. But it also failed to cut through…
What do I need to do?
Things I noticed:
Drop depth was .6 (but with 2 passes that only adds up to 1.2 out of 1.5)
The second time I noticed laser power was 6%?! (Did not change that, as it said to use default settings)
Measured the wood provided, and turned out to be closer to 1.7mm.
Auto Focus - failed both times. Tried to select “Best cut” Manually but there was no description on how to determine that, so that seemed rather subjective (Maybe I selected the wrong one?)
I have the same problem. I’ve tried making the feather, and it just burned through a huge chunk of the wood. Same thing for filled in text. Not sure what i’m doing wrong - i haven’t touched any settings beyond what was originally provided. Someone on reddit said it could be that the laser is defocused. I’ve recalibrated, and its still giving me all sorts of issues. zero successful laser projects, and i’ve now tried 5. Super disappointing.
I have several projects in mind with the laser. Thankfully most are just etching, but I do have some that would require cutting. I hope I can figure out a fix. For now I am going to try and make sure its focused properly. I was looking at the calibration etches, and might try to select a different one than I did for my two tests…I saw somewhere you can use a camera (probably through a filter) to make sure the point is as small as possible.
Having explored the 3d printer, (and got it to work pretty well), I’ve now joined you guys using the laser. My test run doesn’t cut through either.
After reading what you’ve said here I tried 3 passes at 0.5mm. Seemed logical 3 x 0.5mm = 1.5mm? No joy at all. I just hope that someone from SM chimes in here with an answer. The calibration paper cut worked fine but cutting 0.1mm thick paper is a tad limiting!
Still have the grey-scale option to play with but a cut through something thicker than copy-paper will definitely be needed. Come on SnapMaker, give us some help please!
Yeah, I have some ideas for some projects, and would love to be able to cut through at least 1/8th inch thick wood… but first I need to figure out how to get through 1/16th…
I am so glad you wrote this because i am having the same issue. Same I would love to get through 1/8th, but i never got through the 1/16th for laser box. My attempts have failed each time. Snapmaker please address the issue???
Y’know, SnapMaker are usually pretty good at jumping in with help. I guess the problem is that we need to keep poking at a subject before they notice us. Let’s hope that this flurry of activity on the topic is picked up. 1.5mm ply here we come! 1/8th inch? Whoa, that’ll need the new high-power laser I suspect.
A smaller focus spot size would also help. Keep in mind that laser cutting is far more complex than it may look like at first. Many parameter play in when it comes to good cutting performance. The optical output power is just one, which may be improved with a more powerful laser diode. But you also want to have a long focus length and a small spot for a high power density as well as little power loss due to the used lenses. Needless to say that the focus shall be right. An additional air assists also helps you to get the just burned material out of the carve to cut even further.
I’m still struggling with the not-very-clear instructions for setting up the laser. One probably major problem is that I don’t have a lap-top and I can’t seem to get a wifi connection between the SM machine and my tower system computer although the SM machine has found and connected to the wifi signal from the router. Calibrate cuts a neat square burn on a piece of paper but that’s it; no idea what I’m supposed to do after that. Make a paper hat out of it? A doiley?
I’m waiting for an extension cable to connect the USB-A socket on the computer to the USB-B hole in the SM. No idea if that will help but there must be a reason for the litle USB socket by the touch-screen connector. Yes, I’m grasping at straws here!
I did do my first runs with the laser head using lightburn, which offers a full functional 30 day trial version. I haven’t really decided whether to buy that software yet as I cannot get myself to cut wood with the current laser head. There is some learning curve but you get some quite fast results. To find the best cutting settings I started with 120mm/min at full power and adjusted the number of passes and steps in per pass. Because I used birch instead of balse for my first tests I ended up with 36 passed and 0.09mm step in per pass. You need to know that according to the Janka scale birch is like 40 times as hard as balsa. You may guess how well those two compare to each other…
As for the laser head calibration you want to select the distance which produces the sharpest/most narrow line. See also this thread.
P.S.: Due to my bad WiFi coverage I ended up doing everthing without a live camera view.
The mini-usb is the proper connector to connect to a pc.
On some computers you may need to install drivers:
There are two different ways that SM calibrates the laser. One is for focus height so that you have the correct focus distance and the optimal/highest power/most concentrated beam for cutting and engraving. (that’s the multiple lines like a ruler)
The second is for the camera capture. (that’s the one with the square)
Unlike 3d printing you don’t need to use the auto-calibration for laser. I find it works quite well for me for focus but some people have had problems with it. The camera on the other hand I find completely useless and falls apart if the object has any thickness. I’ve found there are faster and easier and more accurate ways to do placement.
For focus though, you will need to make sure that you’re at the correct focus height for the thickness of material you have. For this you want to set the height so it’s the smallest dot possible. While wearing your goggles (or you can use your cell phone - sometimes easier to see/tell) adjust the height so it’s the smallest dot.
If you want to use auto-focus I highly recommend you get a digital caliper. (you should have one for cnc and 3d printing too) Even though materials are listed as a certain thickness they rarely actually are.
Make sure you’re running at 100% power for cutting. I always make sure to check the ‘fixed power’ box and make sure it’s at 100%.
Lastly, defaults are always starting points. Every machine is different, and especially every piece of plywood is different. The glue on some suppliers makes it almost impossible to cut through. Try more passes, and or slower work speed.
-S
I did find this from SnapMaker, it does look mildly helpful. Kinda wish they made included it with the instruction manual. Im going to give it a try and see if it works.
Hi guys, thanks for the replies and links. I’ve been sitting here waiting for the promised delivery of that USB cable but nuffin’ happened today. I’d like to get the computer and printer to talk to each other before I go any further in the set-up. I live in a very rural part of Portugal so delays in everything are just the norm. I’ll hang on reading the links and report back as soon as I’m up and running again.
I did finally get it to go through! I tried the settings the chart I shared earlier recommended but that didn’t work (I also had set it to 1.6mm thickness, instead of 1.5). But then I tried again using the touch screen to set work speed at 50%.
So my specs were:
Laser power: 100%
Step down: .2mm
Thickness: 1.6 mm
Passes: 3
Jog speed: 750mm/min
Work speed: 25mm/sec
Now Im going to adjust these setting to see if I can speed the process up a little…
Hope this helps someone
For some reason (still haven’t figured out why) it ends up doing several runs on the same pass. So technically it ran about 9 times? For the square it cut, it would start tracing from the bottom left, and go clockwise, then trace once around from the middle right, then one more from the left side. Then it would lower and repeat… Might be an issue with my file that I uploaded, that caused to G-code to run that way. But those are the settings I had plugged in.
[Sigh] This may turn into a rant; if so, I apologise in advance.
My USB extension cable arrived, yippee! Luban can see the SM machine, whoo-hoo! But that’s IT. I need some help here guys, I’ve wandered through all the help I can find on the SnapMaker web pages and they just keep going on about doing things using Wifi. I don’t/can’t connect using Wifi. Please SM, please produce a single downloadable comprehensive User Manual for us; all this ‘refer to xxxx link’ doesn’t do the business. Very swish, nicely laid out web pages but no ruddy help if you’re trying to get the camera to actually do something apart from cutting yet another square hole in a page of copy-paper. (I’ve now got four of those but no image! What’s that about?!)
Rant warning… I paid ten times the price of my Ender 3 for this bit of kit. Beautifully engineered I’m sure with a wonderful manual on how to put the thing together but then… The Luban software is awful; have a look at a real slicer, Cura 4.9 is now out and available and shows what modern software should look like. OK, Ultimate have a huge team I’m sure but Snapmaker charged a lot of money for this machine.
My experience so far has been like a trusting child led into the forest by a very kindly man and then left alone in a thicket of brambles with no way of finding my way home.
I give up. I’m going back to the 3d printer module although I already have a working Ender 3 . An expensive mistake on my part to believe the hype around this 3-in-1 machine. I’m outa here. Sad really more than angry.
Oh, just a final thought. I’ve used up the supplied 1.5mm ply in my faffing around and sourcing more is going to be difficult. But all is not lost! I’ve been cutting up the lovely 2mm packaging that the SM machine came it. I can cut through that beautifully with the laser. The little box doesn’t go together though and would be fairly useless even if it did!
Nice, I didn’t think about using the shipping box as potential material! Thankfully I found a site that sells 1.5mm plywood and they actually had a location in my city. So I restocked and am still running tests. I’m sorry to hear there are issues communicating between the computer and the printer. What exactly are you not able to do? I’ve messed around with my SM’s touchscreen to figure out what you can do from there vs what needs to be done on the computer. Are you having trouble sending G-codes to the printer or something?
