Anyone else have a trotec 80 watt?

[TAMI WILSON]

What settings do you use to engrave baltic burch plywood. I am using setting supplied and they are way off. I am beginning to wonder if the machine is not putting out what it is supposed to. Mubarak said he would get me different software but one would think that an 80/100 watt tube would have a little more oomph!

Just curious what another 80 watt does with Baltic Burch? Share your settings anyone?


tami

[Scott Shepherd]

Are you engraving or cutting?

[Mike Null]

Tami

rule no. 1. none of the pre-sets will be exactly right for your machine. All 80 watt machines are not the same anymore than all 40 watt machines are the same. You will have to find what works best for you materials and machine. I have changed virtually every setting on my 45 watt machine.

Tell us more specifically what thickness of BB you are trying to cut and the settings you are using.

[TAMI WILSON]

Using 1/8 Baltic Burch ply. I can cut at 100/.80 1000 ppi ( I got a nice cut at these settings.) what confuses me is it is hard to darken (engrave) the wood at 100/85 500ppi. At those settings I have to go over 3 times to get a decent contrast. Bret just called me from Trotec and basically said the laser will engrave but not darken the wood. That I should put it out of focus to get the color change. I have much to learn it seems. They advertise these things as idiot proof, obviously they are not. :-)

Tami

[Keith Outten]

Tami,

I have a Speedy 300 80 watt laser. I haven't engraved or cut any Baltic Birch yet so I can't help with this one. Every machine is unique so you have to establish your parameters for your machine as you go along. As Mike said the presets in the Job Control Software are just a place to start, they need to be tweaked for each material type and sometimes for unique jobs.

You will learn quick how much experience the people in this Forum have and the idea that a Laser Engrave is just a printer is far from the truth :)
.

[Scott Shepherd]

Tami, the laser WILL darken the wood.

That's one issue people have with very fast machines. They move so fast, it takes a LOT of power to get things like this done at 100% Speed. 80 Watts isn't enough power to get a dark mark at 100% speed.

Cut your speed to 50 and you'll see a lot better mark. Keep the power at 100. You can also change the PPI to 1000 to try and help, but sometimes that can cause other issues.

Try that and report back.

For your vector, try 100% power, 1.6 on the speed, 1000 PPI and see how that works for you.

[Khalid Nazim]

Scott, this is just for my educations sake to understand Trotec terminology - What you do you mean by 1.6 on the speed? Is it an inch/sec or mm/sec or a % of full speed?

Regards
Khalid

[Scott Shepherd]

Kalid, the speed is expressed in percentage. I don't understand why it works the way it does, but for vectoring, 3% is flying. I don't know what the top vector speed is, or where it loses quality. I think I remember someone being in the 15% range and having issues, so I am sure there's some limit to speed/quality.

For this case, 1.6% speed should get her in a good starting point for that machine. In don't know how many inches per second it is, to me, it's just a measurement unit. I find whatever works and use it.

[Mike Null]

The top vector speed is 31 ips on a Trotec Speedy 300. Most of my cutting is done at 2.0 or less--some at .6. AS Steve says even that is faster than you would imagine.

[Michael Kowalczyk]

Mike you beat me to it. I cut 3mm BB at around .95 % with a 2 inch lens and sometimes 1.25% with a 1 1/2" lens. Engraving is usually at 100% power, 45 to 30% for engraving. the lower the darker and or deeper. I use 2500 to 5000 hz and either 333 DPI or 600 DPI depending on the detail need. twice the DPI is twice the time it takes to engrave it but when doing small items time difference is minimal but finished product is superior.

Tami...search my posts and you will see some different items and engraving tests done that may give you an idea of what can be done. Bret was correct about going out of focus sometimes but with BB if you break through the 1st layer you are exposing the next layer of veneer and it may have different results one way or the other. Show us some pics and your settings so we can see what you are doing. You may or may have higher expectations for the material. All species of wood are not great for engraving. Some, like cherry and alder are great for contrast. Oak stinks, IMHO, because of the way the grain is. Maple, basswood are nice for gentle contrast. Walnut can be nice but you have the find the right grain for the engraving. I have done some Western Cedar with amazing results but I had to cull a lot of would to get what I wanted. Run down to the lumber yard and get a bunch of exotic and domestic scraps and experiment. Look up George Perzel (Some one please help with his name) here on the creek has several varieties that you can use.

[Scott Shepherd]

To follow up on Bret and Michael's point- Tami, if you are rastering and then vectoring, on your raster color (let's assume black), in the settings, on the "Z-Offset" field, enter .030" or .040" or .060". Then the machine will automatically take itself out of focus when engraving and then when vector cutting, it'll come back into focus so you can get through the vectoring in the most efficient manner.

[Glen Monaghan]

I've found that many woods will engrave fine at higher speeds and powers but won't darken. Too much energy just vaporizes the wood (engraving) without leaving behind any significant amount of caramelized or charred material for contrast.

When I really want both good depth and good contrast on difficult wood species, I raster once at the highest speed and power that gives me the desired depth (but possibly poor material contrast other than shadowing) and again at a much slower speed and pretty low power so that the engraved area doesn't vaporize more but instead heats and discolors (darkens). I think of it as "toasting" the wood.

-Glen

[Mike Null]

There are some woods which never seem to provide the contrast you desire. I resort to what I call "increasing the dwell", that is i slow the speed and lower the power and increase the dpi, sometimes up to 1000. That will improve my results but even then I caution my customers not to expect a lot of contrast.

Depending on the variety of the wood I will often recommend a color fill.