Engraving speed

[Bert Kemp]

Stared this because of other thread that sorta got into this subject.
Its been said many times here that over 80 watts in a Chinese machine was not advisable for engraving, because it was hard to dial down the power to get a good engraving.
BUT!! if your speed was faster wouldn't the extra power make up for it.?

[Braden Todd]

I would think so too. I engrave almost daily with 400 watts and it still works well

[Gary Hair]

Like I said in the other post, you don't have the quality machine to be able to handle high speeds with any kind of accuracy. Plus, all I read about glass tubes is that they don't turn on and off fast enough to keep up with higher speeds. So, no, a faster machine won't mean you can take advantage of higher power. You can put a ferrari engine in a volkswagon but that doesn't mean it will go as fast as a ferrari.

[Bill George]

I thought it had to do with a larger dot size on the more power machines?

[Gary Hair]

That may be part of it but I think that is a minor issue. One other part is power control. If you have a 120 watt machine then every percent you change is a higher value than the same percentage change on a 30 watt machine - eg 10% power on a 120 is 12 watts, on a 30 it is 3 - that's a big difference! Plus, glass tubes don't seem to want to work below a certain percentage, so if you can't get to a low enough number then you will overpower the substrate.