Josh Jackson
04-03-2016, 2:12 PM
Hello Sawmill friends,
As usual I mention to clients I am experimenting with a new tool or material and they begin ordering. The saga of love hate relationships. Here is my issue. About a month and a half ago I was able to set up my Fibermark 30W. Thankfully some friends in the local tech school are providing scrap sheets of aluminum and steel for me to run tests on. However, I am getting a bit tired of trying to go through every single setting adjustment to see what happens.
Now before I get harped on let me explain what I am doing and why I am working through the whole gamut. I discovered while studying up that you can achieve discoloring of metals based on certain settings. When I pressured the manufacturer's fab shop they sent me a picture of a sample sheet they did. The sample only had a few colors and really skewed settings. When I asked for them to help me narrow the window on applicable settings the response was "you'll just have to try as many settings as you can to see what you get." yay....FYI...with a fibermark and skipping power in 10s, speed in 5s, frequency in 5s and every focus range that comes out to roughly 100k possible settings to test. Trust me I even have excel sheets to support this math.
To further complicate the issue I have been getting urgent requests for doing these Yeti, or Yeti-like, mugs. Which requires a 1.5" focus lens when I add the rotary attachment. So my testing has to be done on an elevated jig with flat metal sheets so it gets within the focus range because the table does not reach all the way up for a 1.5" lens dead 0 focus. Another yay.
All this being said to give proper supporting information. I have scanned the forum but only find pre-2011 posts vaguely alluding to fibermarks and settings. So I am asking the following questions.
1. Has anyone gone through this whole testing phase with a fibermark that would be willing to share their knowledge?
2. Has anyone found the focus/power/speed ranges to get all the adequate marks?
- Caveat, I know some will tell me only within certain focuses but when I did 5 S/ 5 P/ 1 Fr/ -500 to -410 I got marking. Bumped up the power to 10 and got nothing. This made my brain hurt for a bit.
3. Are there better jigs anyone has for a similar problem? All of mine so far have proven either unstable or incapable of keeping the metal flat.
-And I've tried a few things, but the hard part is precision and stability. The material has to be completely flat since the focus goes in small measurements (.001 and .003 / .2 to .8 mm)
Fun times. And as always, thank you.
Respectfully,
JJ 'The Gent'
As usual I mention to clients I am experimenting with a new tool or material and they begin ordering. The saga of love hate relationships. Here is my issue. About a month and a half ago I was able to set up my Fibermark 30W. Thankfully some friends in the local tech school are providing scrap sheets of aluminum and steel for me to run tests on. However, I am getting a bit tired of trying to go through every single setting adjustment to see what happens.
Now before I get harped on let me explain what I am doing and why I am working through the whole gamut. I discovered while studying up that you can achieve discoloring of metals based on certain settings. When I pressured the manufacturer's fab shop they sent me a picture of a sample sheet they did. The sample only had a few colors and really skewed settings. When I asked for them to help me narrow the window on applicable settings the response was "you'll just have to try as many settings as you can to see what you get." yay....FYI...with a fibermark and skipping power in 10s, speed in 5s, frequency in 5s and every focus range that comes out to roughly 100k possible settings to test. Trust me I even have excel sheets to support this math.
To further complicate the issue I have been getting urgent requests for doing these Yeti, or Yeti-like, mugs. Which requires a 1.5" focus lens when I add the rotary attachment. So my testing has to be done on an elevated jig with flat metal sheets so it gets within the focus range because the table does not reach all the way up for a 1.5" lens dead 0 focus. Another yay.
All this being said to give proper supporting information. I have scanned the forum but only find pre-2011 posts vaguely alluding to fibermarks and settings. So I am asking the following questions.
1. Has anyone gone through this whole testing phase with a fibermark that would be willing to share their knowledge?
2. Has anyone found the focus/power/speed ranges to get all the adequate marks?
- Caveat, I know some will tell me only within certain focuses but when I did 5 S/ 5 P/ 1 Fr/ -500 to -410 I got marking. Bumped up the power to 10 and got nothing. This made my brain hurt for a bit.
3. Are there better jigs anyone has for a similar problem? All of mine so far have proven either unstable or incapable of keeping the metal flat.
-And I've tried a few things, but the hard part is precision and stability. The material has to be completely flat since the focus goes in small measurements (.001 and .003 / .2 to .8 mm)
Fun times. And as always, thank you.
Respectfully,
JJ 'The Gent'