On 11/17/2012 03:12 AM, Jeshua Lacock wrote: > I think for cutting I will use spindle speed, which will allow me to use the > Z for multiple passes if needed to cut through thick material (e.g. 3/4" > wood).
I'm slowly building a laser (too many other concurrent projects!) and I think I'll do the same thing. I need to be able to control laser power through PWM and laser speed. I'll use my laser for short run manufacturing. One of the products is .250" thick foam. The multiple passes are needed to cut through at a given energy density, to avoid charring the material and changing its physical characteristics on the edges (or worst case, setting it on fire). I'm looking forward to using my 80W laser instead of the 40W laser I've been using. Hopefully, I'll be able to cut faster, although I suspect the material properties will dictate that to a larger extent than the laser power. > My main interest is to get cutting working, then engraving will be the > frosting on the cake. Same here. Cutting is my primary task. I do some engraving, but it's not photographic images. I engrave logos. By the time they're rendered for laser engraving, they're simple two color images. Either the material is engraved, or it's not. Much as I'm interested in Graster, I think I'll skip raster engraving at first, and will instead try to use Inkscape to generate G code that will do vector engraving. I don't think it'd work well for complex gray scale photographic images, but I hope it'll work well enough for my solid text and logos. With vector engraving, each letter or solid logo element will be engraved as an entire element, before moving on to the next graphic element. The G code will be the same as milling an irregularly shaped pocket. I expect the speed of my XY motion to be the determining factor. I'll probably be making these small motions as fast as the laser is capable of moving, and I'll adjust the laser power for the engraved depth that I want to achieve. If it works, I'll post the details, probably with a video. > I am building a whole new machine for it that has a usable area of 5x9x3 > feet! It is coming along nicely, but I can't wait to start using it! I started with a need for 1'X2' laser, and managed to talk myself into 2'X5'. When I get raster engraving operational, that will be a 2'X4' laser bed with X over travel so the entire area can be used for raster engraving. I can't wait to start using my new laser, too! I'm completely project crazed - CNC conversion of a friend's giant gantry router for her business, CNC conversion of my lathe, CNC conversion of my milling machine, I recently decided to add a small anodizing line and black oxide line to my shop, and this weekend I'm building a shed so I can get all of the excess junk out of the basement shop so I have room to work this winter on all of my projects. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
