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eric pearson
04-30-2019, 6:02 PM
I see several post that ask for particular settings etc. How can we start a discussion on what to look for in settings and how to decide what steps to take? I am new to fiber lasers and have a few questions in hopes that i can eventually read my work to improve it. I have downloaded the TYMKA book and loaded those settings into an Excel sheet if anyone likes.

Maybe this thread could be the discussion starter.

From my reading lower frequency is deeper engrave. higher frequency is more heat less engrave?

Can we just run full speed until we run out of power, then back the speed down?

Also would be useful I saw a youtube video of somebody running a sample card in which a test block of several speeds powers and frequencies were run accross the spectrum so you could easily pic the effect you prefer, this test fife could then just be run on each material type?

Gary Hair
04-30-2019, 6:22 PM
I wish it were as simple as full speed until you run out of power, like it can be with a co2. The beauty of the fiber is that you can find myriad settings with varying power/speed/freq/hatch settings that will yield the exact same results. You will also find varying one setting may give you wildly different results that are 100% non-intuitive - you would never in a million years deduce the results from the settings. As an example - I have marked hundreds of Magpul iPhone cases and the one setting that took them from making a mark that looked like black, burnt, mashed potatoes, to a beautiful tan color that had no texture, was the hatch spacing. Too close and you get the potato finish, too far apart and you get nothing, hit the sweet spot and you get beauty!
When I bought my first fiber I posted pretty much exactly what you did and downloaded the same file you probably did, along with tons of others, and after all was said and done, I learned enough to know my machine and my typical materials well enough that I could pretty much guess what combination would work. 90% of the time I was right, the other 10% took a bit of fiddling to get there.
The best advice I can give you is to spend your time with a bunch of materials and settings until you figure it out.
In pretty non-technical terms (cause that's all I know), frequency is how many times the laser pulses in a given time period - lower means less pulses (with more power per pulse) and higher means more pulses (with less power per pulse). For hogging out metal quickly for a deep engrave, I would use high power, low speed, and low frequency. It makes a bit of a mess with slag, but it gets the job done. For polishing and frosting stainless, or bleaching anodized aluminum, I would use less power, higher speed and high frequency.

Get some metal and play! Be methodical and track your results, they will show you patterns developing and will certainly come in handy later!

eric pearson
04-30-2019, 6:37 PM
Thank you much Gary.

ok so maybe i take this one day and material at a time. today im playing with Aluminum. is it possible to get a dark mark? How do I know that I am approaching it?

My guess would be high Frequency high speed and high power till it sparks and then back off power? but how do I know Im approaching it

Bill George
04-30-2019, 7:06 PM
Get a bunch of materials and a notebook and start learning. When I had my fiber I spent 2-4 weeks doing just that.

Kev Williams
04-30-2019, 7:45 PM
I've noticed no one ever seems to talk about the 'overlap gauge' in EzCad...
409032

pressing this button at the speed/freq shown shows this:
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cut the speed in half, you get:
409034

now, also cut the freq in half to 20khz, and you get-
409035

--exactly the same laser pulse spacing as we had at double the speed and frequency--

So, speed and frequency go hand in hand-- the trick is to regulate the power to work with the pulse width you're using. In practice, the more the pulses overlap, the more polish effect (low power high speed) or anneal effect (high power low speed) you get, and the less the pulses overlap, the more ablating/cutting action you get.

-- Or not! Just when you think you got the thing figured out, it'll prove you wrong :D (but I'm still amazed every day at what these machines will do!)

Morgan Jackson
04-30-2019, 10:20 PM
Hey Eric,
You and I are sitting in the same chair at the same moment. I've spent many hours reading the posts here and gotten a lot of really really good advice and learned that there is really some voodoo in the settings.

Basically what I've done is used the Tykma docs as a guide. They cover the basics pretty well. I found that a couple of their setting suggestions must have a typo.. I don't know. for example, I tried "white mark on brass" and got a white(ish) mark on brass. No worry, a little random tweaking on the settings (I guessed) got me a white mark on brass (BANG, IN THE NOTEBOOK! And, I save the piece if I can as a visual aid). Then I tried black mark on brass. And I got a beautiful.... brass mark on brass. I fiddled with the settings.. and.. uhh.. no change. So, since I don't need to make any black on brass today.. that became a 'tomorrow morgan' problem. Tomorrow Morgan often hates Yesterday Morgan.

As to useful advice.. the only thing I have is 'run a notebook', and to that example, I was playing with marking some plastic. Happened to be a pair of $70 ear muffs. if only on accident, I got a brilliant mark first try. Minimal welting, great tan color against the otherwise green plastic. PERFECT. I'll remember that setting.

Guess what happened when I went to the second set a week later.. No idea what the setting was and now it looks like the muffs had some weird cancer. Worse, I can not for the life of me figure out the setting again. such as it goes. Lesson learned.

That said, I'd love to see some kind of shareable chart where we can keep a list of "this worked for me". Though there are a lot of different lasers and different powers and what not.. I have found that if the laser is 'similar', and I can get their settings it's a huge leg up on my eventual guess work. Some folks have posted up some Glock and Pmag stipple and color change settings, I found my eventual settings were different, but using theirs as a starting point saved me, likely hours, and massive amounts of test space. You know... I can cut up a Glock frame.. that's not offensive.. but I can't get a block of Glock frame material to try on.. I have to use an actual frame, every time! It can get expensive sometimes.

John Lifer
05-01-2019, 9:42 AM
Oh and click on the advance tab and play with the wobble setting. Now that one is interesting. On aluminum it will give you a really nice dark frosting. Not black, it really doesn't change the color, but I think it is just better breaking up the surface and giving you less light refracting back. And it hogs pretty good too. Yes, keep at least a notebook, but I usually just save the settings with as much notes as I can in the description.
And as others and I have said, get scrap and time and play...... and practice and practice. And if anyone has any settings that work on a P80 lower, I'd love them. I only get a melted mess, want to cut, not melt.

Kev Williams
05-01-2019, 2:16 PM
It's a shame they didn't translate 'wobble' correctly, 'spiral' would make more sense, since it engraves a continuous spiral. It's intended use (according to the instructions) is to created wide lines out of single lines, which it does nicely. When using it, one must remember the positive offset it will create on outermost outlines, equal to half the distance of the diameter entered...

here's wobble in use, all 3 of these are different settings using the same straight line,
409090
top and bottom are same diameter, about 5mm (.2"), the bottom distance is also 5mm, but the top distance is probably .05mm.
middle is 'inverted' with less diameter with lots of distance between..

It's a fun feature to play with :) --but use care, that top line is near pure charcoal... ;)

Trevor HinzeNE
05-01-2019, 3:49 PM
I have been in the same boat. Spent the last few weeks experimenting. Since at this point I am only using scraps I engrave on the scraps and save them, for example I may put text on my samples that is configured this way " Aluminum Speed/Power/.01cross hatch/45deg/80Khz" Then I will do that with several settings next to each other and engrave them all as a reference. I have not yet begun to mess with the advanced settings, but I did look at them....more fun to be had. Now if I could just figure out how to get things on different layers to engrave in a certain order....there has to be a way!

409091

Kev Williams
05-01-2019, 7:42 PM
There is, the 'object list' on the left side- if it's not there click on the 'view' tab and check the box. The list box is expandable if need be.

As you add objects they show up in the list-- As you group items on screen they'll highlight and show you the order they're in.

In the box, right clicking on them gives you the options to top or bottom, or one place at a time... A bit cumbersome but it works!

Trevor HinzeNE
05-01-2019, 9:47 PM
Excellent news, thanks! I will try it out tomorrow.