Laser Novice : Guidance Required

[navin vijayakumar]

Hello Friends.. I recently have purchased a 1200x900, 80 Watt laser from G.Weike.. Got no complains about the machinery as such.. There had been few issues and had been sorted out.. I am a complete newbie when it comes to laser machine.. But I managed to learn a little of how the machine/software works without any reading.. Now i need expert's guidance for getting my job done more efficiently and effectively.

This machinery is mainly used for engraving in leather. And here are few issues for which I need guidance :
One of the leather shoe component(outside quarter) has to be engraved with JOOP! logo in it(picture attached). The problem here is, the logo has a box around it and when the laser engraves the logo, the 2 horizontal lines are more deeply engraved than the rest of the vertical line and the text.. This results in an uneven outcome.. If I increase the power and speed, The leather gets cut in the 2 horizontal lines but the rest of the engraving is good.. If I decrease the power and speed to adjust to the 2 horizontal lines and the rest of the engraving is bad.. Please help me with this.. The following is the setting I used for engraving:


Speed : 600
Power : 30
scan gap : .05000
Bi-Dir & blow is selected.


I seriously don't know what this setting got to do with the engraving.. I just play with the speed/power to se if i get better results..Some help here would be highly appreciated..

Thanks

[Ross Moshinsky]

Are you raster engraving (laser goes left to right) or are you vector engraving (laser traces the logo)?

It looks like you are vector engraving and raster engraving is probably going to give you a much more consistent result. You will need to figure out how to optimize the engraving when rastering. You do not want the laser head traveling the whole length of the gantry and back just to do 6 logos.

[navin vijayakumar]

^^Thanks.. Please pardon me for my ignorance.. But what is difference between the raster engraving and vector engraving?? Is every machine capable of performing both raster as well as vector engraving?? If what shown in this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g4HeYXfNwA&feature=related) is right, then my machine does the raster engraving.. Here is how it does the job for me. As you see in the attached picture, I arrange the components in pair(10 pairs at a go). The laser starts engraving from the bottom of the table and it engraves 1 pair simultaneously, then moves up to engrave the next pair(something similar to old dot-matrix type printing. Iam not sure if this is the right way of doing the job. But it is the best i could make with this machine with limited knowledge of laser machine.

I will try to post a video of how it does the job presently.. In the mean time, some views and guidance on this issue would be grateful.

Thanks

[Khalid Nazim]

Based on the first picture which shows your settings, you have the black lines set for engraving at 600mm/s speed and 30 power. The software for your GWIEKE machine is RDCAM/LaserCut etc which is common to most of the chinese machines. There is no setting for raster or vector engraving. You can only decide if the line color will engrave or cut. If you set the line color to engrave, the whole area within the lines will engrave. If you set the line color to cut, the laser will follow the line and only fire where the line is.

The last picture is blurry but I can see that you are engraving the whole area between the two lines of the box. So this is what I would do:

1. Set the color of the two lines for the rectangular box to a color other than black which is what you have selected for the logo
2. Set a lower power for the color representing the rectangular box

I would just like to make one more observation: I also have an 80W laser and cut/engrave leather everyday. My optimum settings for engraving leather are 500mm/s speed and Power between 20% to 24%. I usually start at 20% and if I get good impression and no residue I keep it that value. Try these settings on a spare piece to check if these work for you.

Regards
Khalid

[Joe Pelonio]

With the sensitive speed and power settings needed for some materials like leather, the back-and-forth motion from left to right means that the pulsing on and off for horizontal lines are more even and thick than those on the vertical lines. One way to minimize this is to run a vertical line on the far left and right edges of the work space that do not hit your material, so the head goes well beyond the horizontal lines, rather than stopping and returning after engraving it. You could also experiemnt with much slower speed and more power.

[navin vijayakumar]

Based on the first picture which shows your settings, you have the black lines set for engraving at 600mm/s speed and 30 power. The software for your GWIEKE machine is RDCAM/LaserCut etc which is common to most of the chinese machines. There is no setting for raster or vector engraving. You can only decide if the line color will engrave or cut. If you set the line color to engrave, the whole area within the lines will engrave. If you set the line color to cut, the laser will follow the line and only fire where the line is.

The last picture is blurry but I can see that you are engraving the whole area between the two lines of the box. So this is what I would do:

1. Set the color of the two lines for the rectangular box to a color other than black which is what you have selected for the logo
2. Set a lower power for the color representing the rectangular box

I would just like to make one more observation: I also have an 80W laser and cut/engrave leather everyday. My optimum settings for engraving leather are 500mm/s speed and Power between 20% to 24%. I usually start at 20% and if I get good impression and no residue I keep it that value. Try these settings on a spare piece to check if these work for you.

Regards
Khalid

Thanks a lot sir.. As per your suggestion, I had given different color to the rectangular box from that in the rest of the logo. When I do this, it engraves the logo first then it starts engraving the outer rectangular box. As you could see in the picture, It engraves 10 pairs at a go.. In this case, the machine does the job in following sequence : first does hole in all ten pairs, then does the laser engraving for Joop! in all ten pairs and then it does rectangular box laser engraving for this ten pairs separately. The problem here is that there are some plan where there is only 2 or 3 pairs in that particular size. In that case, It would do the job even in the place where there is no components placed. Which could be a prolonged process.. Could you please help me with suggestions and views on this issue??



With the sensitive speed and power settings needed for some materials like leather, the back-and-forth motion from left to right means that the pulsing on and off for horizontal lines are more even and thick than those on the vertical lines. One way to minimize this is to run a vertical line on the far left and right edges of the work space that do not hit your material, so the head goes well beyond the horizontal lines, rather than stopping and returning after engraving it. You could also experiemnt with much slower speed and more power.

Thanks for your suggestion sir.. Will update back with the results of experimenting with much slower speed and more power..

TY