PDA

View Full Version : New laser arrived



Ernie Balch
11-20-2011, 8:08 AM
Thanks to this site and the great information I was able to buy a bigger and more powerful laser than I expected. Since I will do mostly cutting I bought Chinese instead of the small used Epilog system I had planned on.

I just installed a 1290 Rabbit with an 80W Reci tube. Ray will be here in the morning to double check everything and turn it on. I have wood, acrylic and painted brass samples ready for testing. I plan on engraving patterns in all four corners of the stage as a test. I thought it would be a good idea to put a big sheet of paper on the stage and write a grid of lines over whole thing to look for any differences.

What other tests or samples should I run to make sure the system is working properly?

ernie

Dee Gallo
11-20-2011, 12:33 PM
Hi Ernie,

Congratulations on your new laser! It will be a lot of fun for you, I'm sure!

I have made grids with thin lines for various reasons and they invariably don't print well unless the lines are 1 point or fatter. When I want to do a test, I usually make shapes (circles, squares, triangles) of various sizes and scatter them around. I throw in some text too. While you're there, put a couple of small bitmapped images, greyscale photos or greyscale blocks and clipart line drawings in the test design. This will give you a better idea of the machine, all at once, than plain grid lines will. Using a big piece of colored matboard is cheap and will give you a more "real" sense of what will happen than using paper, unless you intend to be working with paper as a substrate.

Rich Harman
11-20-2011, 1:47 PM
You may want to check for squareness by cutting out the largest square that you can measure accurately. If the diagonal measurements are not exactly the same then the you know that the axis's alignments are off.

Richard Rumancik
11-20-2011, 2:03 PM
Since you want to use the laser for cutting, you really need to do some cutting tests in all 4 corners, not just engraving. You don't need a large piece of material; just 4 scraps, one in each corner. Then create a cutting file to cut out a square and a a few lines in each corner. Measure the kerf width in each corner with a feeler gage (best in both axes) and measure each square to see if consistent. You also may want to do "threshold" tests in each corner (set power to 100% and increase speed till it won't cut through any more. That will tell you how even the cutting will be over the table span.

Keep records of your tests so you can repeat them in the future if you suspect that the power is dropping or you have other problems.

Gary Hair
11-20-2011, 3:09 PM
Depending on what you are cutting, you should do an alignment test. Cut a 1" square out of 1/4", or thicker, acrylic. Do this in all four extreme corners of the bed. Check the angle of the cut - should be 90 degrees on all four sides of the cut and the same in all four corners. If not, you have some alignment to take care of.

Gary

Ernie Balch
11-20-2011, 5:19 PM
Wow, these are all great ideas!. I will certainly use them to test the system.

ernie

Ernie Balch
11-22-2011, 10:03 AM
Ray came out and set up the laser, things went great and we spent the day running all kinds of tests and sample parts I had piled up. I was quite impressed in the ability to directly mark stainless steel. We were able to mark a stainless pocket knife with both the engraving and vector modes. We also marked some tool steel and some scissors. It had no problems with 1/2 in acrylic or any thing else we tried.

ernie

Craig Matheny
11-22-2011, 12:37 PM
I was quite impressed in the ability to directly mark stainless steel. We were able to mark a stainless pocket knife with both the engraving and vector modes. We also marked some tool steel and some scissors. It had no problems with 1/2 in acrylic or any thing else we tried.

ernie
Wait... Step back a second how did you mark directly on the metal with out Cermark or like product?:confused:

Dan Hintz
11-22-2011, 12:44 PM
Wait... Step back a second how did you mark directly on the metal with out Cermark or like product?:confused:
You have to pour a lot of power into it... slowwww. Your 45W will do it if you use the lens that sharpens you up to a 1mil spot size.

Mike Daniels
11-22-2011, 3:02 PM
Ernie, Ray is great,he will always be there when you need him. He will help anytime!! Good Luck! Mike

Ernie Balch
11-22-2011, 4:27 PM
I directly marked SS knife blades and shears. Cermark was not required. I set the power to 85% and both vector and engrave mode. Engrave mode made a lighter mark but you might expect this since it was the same 325 speed used for acrylic engraving.

Names and logos on knives are small so it only takes a couple of seconds per blade.

ernie