New Fusions M2 Installed

[Keith Winter]

Really interesting Tim, pretty cool to get to be the first one even if it does have a few glitches! I hope all goes smoother with head #2 tomorrow!

[Tim Bateson]

Epilog provides base settings for nearly every wattage of CO2 they sell. However they have yet to provide anything for their Fiber lasers, short of a few guidelines in their manuals. They have had these machines out long enough now to have accumulated base settings... one would think.

As stated earlier, the fiber settings are much more complicated than just increasing power and slowing down. So what I'm asking for is if anyone with a Fiber can share some of their settings. I know mileage may vary, but some rough settings for say deep engraving aluminum or different types of marks on pewter, brass, etc... would be helpful. I just don't happen to have a lot of different metals, such as titanium laying around to do testing with.

[Gary Hair]

As stated earlier, the fiber settings are much more complicated than just increasing power and slowing down.

That is true but you can still generalize to some degree. It's different with a gantry machine vs a galvo, but it may actually be easier with a gantry machine since you don't have hatch to worry about. In general, slower speeds and higher powers will result in deeper engraving. Same thing with frequency - lower frequency is generally deeper than high frequency. So, combine low speed, high power and low frequency, and you'll have a recipe for fast, deep, engraving. To clean up the bottom of the engraved area you can increase the speed and use a higher frequency. Unless you have lots of time, and materials, to do testing, you'll find that for deep engraving you can use very similar settings for most metals. Dark engraving (mistakenly called annealing) and polishing are a different story and I'm not sure how they would work on a gantry machine, that's where you'll have to spend some time testing, but it's been my experience that I use higher speed, higher frequency, lower power and 3-5mm out of focus to get a good polished or darkened surface. I just finished up 240 titanium parts that were marked with a logo and serial number with a polished finish - they turned out spectacular!

[Dan Hintz]

That is true but you can still generalize to some degree. It's different with a gantry machine vs a galvo, but it may actually be easier with a gantry machine since you don't have hatch to worry about. In general, slower speeds and higher powers will result in deeper engraving. Same thing with frequency - lower frequency is generally deeper than high frequency. So, combine low speed, high power and low frequency, and you'll have a recipe for fast, deep, engraving. To clean up the bottom of the engraved area you can increase the speed and use a higher frequency. Unless you have lots of time, and materials, to do testing, you'll find that for deep engraving you can use very similar settings for most metals. Dark engraving (mistakenly called annealing) and polishing are a different story and I'm not sure how they would work on a gantry machine, that's where you'll have to spend some time testing, but it's been my experience that I use higher speed, higher frequency, lower power and 3-5mm out of focus to get a good polished or darkened surface. I just finished up 240 titanium parts that were marked with a logo and serial number with a polished finish - they turned out spectacular!

Gary has it in a nutshell...