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Laser Cutter/Engraver

jcdammeyer said:
Remove living room winow and furniture. Place in middle of room. Put window back in place.
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Sounds good. Then my wife will be asking on some other forum "how do you get rid of a body?"

Dan, a shed would be great, but I'm the middle of the "6". For a heated, powered shed? Permits, inspectors, drawings, fees, neighbours complaining, committee of adjustment ..... naw
 
jcdammeyer said:
I wondered about xtools. As I know nothing about lasers or what a Galvo head is I suspect like many, i'd probably buy into the hype and purchase one. Luckily I don't have room at the moment.
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Xtool, Gweike.... all those are sub par both in quality of components and especially custom support. If you want to deal with a mainstream vendor then buy from someone like CloudRay, at the very least as they have been established long enough to be there if you have a problem. My next laser will come from Haotian or BWM Tech.
 
Thanks for the reply @Mcgyver!
It is perhaps starting to look as 1watt./per 0.001inch +/- cutting steel might be a figuring point to start at power wise for a laser. I am sure there is more to it than that, type of laser, galvo heads and such likely factor into it too.
But only more info would be “make” things clearer, or maybe not. Manufacturer claims are “interesting”, real users are the best.
Lasers cut flesh well, smaller pieces are easier to hide, or get to the grinder—- a neighbour was known to say “don’t pis% me off, I have a grinder and hungry dog”, hmmm, also had pigs.
 
Hey, now do not get this wrong, was just thinking about @Mcgyver saying” wife would be looking on forum,— getting rid of body’s”
The old saying “ learn to use the tools you have”, a laser. Course, here, it’s learn to use the tools others convinced you to get. Hey, I only got so much learning for each day! AND, today is going to be a slooow one.
I am also starting to think that some members may have stocks in lumber/building supplies, “oh sure you can/should/have/buy one of these here.” There is no room in my shop — no problem’oh just add a bit here and it will fit! And, oh hey, well looky here, this will fit too.
 
Bandit said:
@1018Machine , how many times would you have to lower the head for .25 inch engraving? Or what is accurate? depth of cut/metal removal when engraving? I realize focus/ size/diameter of beam changes things. A small/tight?/focused beam needs less wattage to do the same thing? and gives better/higher definition.
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I must have missed this question, sorry!

For deep engraving (with accurately cut side returns) and (based on my 30 Watt fiber laser) it's wise to lower the galvo head every 2mm otherwise the sides start to taper due to the lens going out of focus.
 
Thanks ,@1018Machine, another piece in the puzzle.
As to the shed @Mcgyver, if it’s got to be inspected, could be interesting. I have just lately found out if I have more than 5 people tranportion vehicles in my shop, the rules change. Venting, and some other things. The “weird” thing is 5 mopeds, or 5 very large buses, 5 transports, etc. But 5 — 747 planes and a moped, no way, that’s 6, the “danger rating” etc. changes from F2 to F1, with a list of changes that need to be made. Don’t matter if broke and don’t work! “Hey dude, there’s like 9 bikes, sh##t no, there’s another bike, and a car in here!
Yes, I am in the mire of some changes, would say middle, but don’t think I am that far yet! LOL, MAYBE.
Pictures, @JustaDB knows the mess I keep and anyway still working on Annoyed picture phone to “new” fruit loops pad.
 
There is a bunch of bare concrete, just not much in the shop, anyway no more then when you were there @JustaDB. Same old, not catching up on the projects. LOL
 
Laser etching/engraving is highly fascinating and I have a technical question(s): My son is acquiring gem faceting equipment for the purpose of making gaming dice for Dungeons & Dragons gaming. These dice have 20 facets(+) and will require marking on each facet and would be made from mineral/stone material such as marble, hematite, onyx, & other types of minerals (not sure what all myself but many are costly). He thought using a machine that cuts masking material to paste on the facet and then sand or glass bead blasting the surface would work. This method hasn't been tested but the cost would be quite inexpensive.
However, we both thought that laser engraving would be far superior to the blasting idea but cost is a factor; and will it work? My concern is that to mark the facet of the finished product after the material expense and the lengthy production time, would the blasting technique be of a quality worthy of the desired end result of a high end product. Some D&D aficionados pay anywhere from several hundred to several thousand dollars for specialized dice.
I quickly looked at some of the laser machines discussed and after the considerations budget-wise, would the Atomstack A20 Pro (at $1900 Canadian $) be a decent choice to accomplish this task? This cost is really stretching the budget.
I would also like to use it in my metalworking projects for various things as well.
Thanks to all in advance for your wise & knowledgeable advise!
 
I Decided to go for the Gweike cloud g2 max 50w fiber laser. I did some research on Gweike, and their recent cloud g2 pro 30w fiber laser turned out to be very popular with good reviews. The g2 max is basically an upgrade of the g2 pro and they had it on sale for nearly 50% off which was an awesome deal. That machine seemed to be be the best choice within my budget. 100W lasers and the new OneLaser XRF are too expensive for where I'm at. I might upgrade at some point if I make more progress.
The reason I settled for a fiber laser was because I knew I already had something that could deaply engrave wood, where I was looking for something beter for engraving metal which of course is the primary material. The type of laser makes a big difference on what you are engraving. A fiber laser works best for metal because it emitts an infrared laser beam which is absorbed by metal instead of having a fraction of the energy reflected by metals with a highly reflective surface. However fiber lasers have no effect on wood. They can engrave all metal, plastic and leather, but not wood. In that case I still use my Diode laser for wood, or for larger designs, but I use the fiber laser for everything else.
A fiber laser also has a much finer laser beam, allowing for higher definition/ detail. I haven't tried color engraving yet but color engraving stainless with a fiber laser is also said to be better because of the control of power, speed, and frequency.
The max speed of the Gweike cloud g2 max is 12000mm/s which is 30 times faster than the Di pro diode laser at 400mm/s since it doesn't need to move the entire module with the gantry but just the beam with a series of mirrors.
I've been engraving custom flash drives for MI Petro which they bring to trade shows. To take full advantage of the fiber laser's efficiently I built a jigsaw that fits well into the baseplate of the laser and holds 24 flash drives parallel to one another. When I used the D1 Pro I had to do them one at a time to assure uniformity.
I first tested the deap engraving with a coin, and a simple engraving on a coaster. It does engrave softer metals like brass aluminum and copper fairly quickly, but steal especially hardened steel, still takes a few hours depending on the size and depth by how many passes are needed.
 

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Thank you for this review. The gweike is still top of my list. Whether G2-30w or G2-MAX, will depend on the sales when I accumulate the funds. LOL
One of my goals will be to cut through 1.6mm nickel silver and bronze. About 6mm X 50mm simple shapes. How long do you think it would take to cut them, with the MAX?
 
darrin1200 said:
One of my goals will be to cut through 1.6mm nickel silver and bronze. About 6mm X 50mm simple shapes. How long do you think it would take to cut them, with the MAX?
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I can answer this question, I cut those and many other alloys all the time and the thickness you are interested usually takes about 5 minutes depending on the size and complexity of the shape with my 30W Raycus fiber laser.
 
The g2max could easily cut through 2mm thick metal in 1 pass if you set the speed below 100mm/s with a lower frequency, but it's most often beter to run more passes at higher speed. I engraved my own portrait onto this brass coin which didn't take all that long, and it did come out in finer detail, but the polishing removed it.
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I've updated my spreadsheet with Chris' new tool. 19,233 W/mm^2. The spot diameter size of the laser is not specified - I back guesstimated it from looking in the manual. It suggests setting 500dpi for various raster prints. Assuming that is the spot diameter then working backwards 1/500"=0.002” which is 0.051mm. This may or may not be accurate. @Chris Cramer if you are keen you could try engraving a series of 10 small circles starting at a diameter of 0.03mm and going up by .01mm to 0.13mm. Take a photo of them next to a metric ruler.

@Chris Cramer - Please post a close up or two of those USB drives you are engraving - or anything else you are doing. Are they made of aluminium? Good stuff Chris, very interesting.

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Here's the test you mentioned Janger, on a 10 gauge mild steel flat bar. The first picture shows the results with the laser set to a speed of 100mm/s, and a frequency of 20khz. The second is 2000mm/s at 20khz and both are 100% power.
The laser did a surprisingly good job engraving at 2000 in comparison to the 40W diode laser at 400mm/s.
The flash drives are all aluminum the ir wavelength from the fiber laser works especially well for aluminum because it doesn't reflect off the surface of the aluminum.
I have found it difficult to perfectly align numerous drives with the sketch in lightburn, even when using a jig and simply tracing the sketch used to make the jig. There always seems to be more of an offset from the item as the engraving proceeds up the array.

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Chris Cramer said:
Here's the test you mentioned Janger, on a 10 gauge mild steel flat bar. The first picture shows the results with the laser set to a speed of 100mm/s, and a frequency of 20khz. The second is 2000mm/s at 20khz and both are 100% power.
The laser did a surprisingly good job engraving at 2000 in comparison to the 40W diode laser at 400mm/s.
The flash drives are all aluminum the ir wavelength from the fiber laser works especially well for aluminum because it doesn't reflect off the surface of the aluminum.
I have found it difficult to perfectly align numerous drives with the sketch in lightburn, even when using a jig and simply tracing the sketch used to make the jig. There always seems to be more of an offset from the item as the engraving proceeds up the array.
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The first picture above loads but the last three do not load for me. I’ve tried two browsers - no good. If cloudflare has a bad cache is there any way to fix it? Do the photos load for anyone?
 
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