MOPA fiber laser, where to start?!

[Neville Stewart]

Hi Scott, mind sharing your settings for black on Anodized?

Hello Scott,
MOPA will produce a beautiful black mark on anodised alumnium, such as iPad.

Attachment 385609The marks are indistinguishable from the factory marks, and smooth to the touch. As far as I know they are durable as the anodised finish.

[Darren Wilson]

Settings as follows:

160mm lens

2000S
25P
800kHz
4PW
.010 hatching

focus is slightly off 1/4 to 1/2 turn near

you may have to play around with s/p as your source is 50w to my 20w.

Have a crack and let me know how it works for you...

[Rodne Gold]

55k is a horrendous price...you can get a 30w fibre door to door in 5-7 days for 10k or less...5k for a 20w ...

[John Lifer]

I agree Rodney, I typed in a comment the other day and deleted as I tend to 'push' Chinese lasers a bit more than I might should, but my comment was to buy a 20 or 30 watt Chinese direct for less than 20% of his price quoted, use for a bit as a trial, and if it failed, sell for 95% of what he paid for it.

And no wonder my semi Mopa won't do black on Aluminum, I can only go to 400kHz..... not 800.

[Neville Stewart]

4PW, waveform 4?

Settings as follows:

160mm lens

2000S
25P
800kHz
4PW
.010 hatching

focus is slightly off 1/4 to 1/2 turn near

you may have to play around with s/p as your source is 50w to my 20w.

Have a crack and let me know how it works for you...

[Eric Sooy]

I have an XT Laser Mopa laser engraver, 20W that comes from China. Excellent machine and the transaction went very smoothly. I highly recommend this company. In fact I am waiting on delivery of a C02 laser from them. If you go to alibaba.com and search for XT Laser you can find them. Let me know if you have any questions. No I'm not a sales guy, just a happy customer and new member of Sawmill Creek.

[Jeff Watkins]

4PW, waveform 4?

@Neville MOPA lasers have adjustable pulse width in Nano Seconds. So his 4PW setting would be a Pulse Width of 4ns (Nano Seconds).

I have a JPT 30w MOPA (M6+-L series) and it's adjustable from 2-250ns pulse width, and a frequency range of 2-2000kHz. Different sources have different ranges, some SPI which will go to 500ns. It's in steps so not completely variable but it is adjustable. Q-Switches laser on the other hand have a fixed pulse width that ranges usually from 100-200 depending on the fiber source.

[Neville Stewart]

Thanks Jeff. I’m using Scaps too so it has a little different nomenclature.
Your mopa range goes up to 2gig?

[Darren Wilson]

Sorry Neville... what Jeff said.

My software is MAXMarking 2, looks like a cloned/stripped down EZCad. I don't have wave forms just a pulse width setting. Would love to have some type of conversion chart Waveform to PW if anyone out there has one...

[Matthew Stellas]

I have an XT Laser Mopa laser engraver, 20W that comes from China. Excellent machine and the transaction went very smoothly. I highly recommend this company. In fact I am waiting on delivery of a C02 laser from them. If you go to alibaba.com and search for XT Laser you can find them. Let me know if you have any questions. No I'm not a sales guy, just a happy customer and new member of Sawmill Creek.

I recently purchased a 60W MOPA through Jason at XT Laser and could not be happier. I currently have a 300mm lens on it but need to swap in the 100mm to give some deep engraving a shot. They included a USB drive with screenshots of the settings for each lens, but I'm still a bit confused as to how to calibrate the red indicator laser. Hopefully I can mess with it a bit more this week, I'm just hesitant to make changes to something that currently works flawlessly.

[John Lifer]

Assuming here you have an Internal LED through the lens and an external mounted on head (or close to it) that will intersect.
Internal isn't usually calibrated, you use Ruler to check height and move the external mount to make them line up.
If you have different system, I'll say contact XT Laser....

[Jeff Watkins]

Sorry Neville... what Jeff said.

My software is MAXMarking 2, looks like a cloned/stripped down EZCad. I don't have wave forms just a pulse width setting. Would love to have some type of conversion chart Waveform to PW if anyone out there has one...

@Neville Yes, my RayFine JPT MOPA goes to 2000kHz. I did a lot of research before buying it. Not all of the fiber sources go that high, in fact most don't. There are things out in that range that will be nice to have but many people will never use. I did the JPT YDFLP-30-M6+-L because it has a higher mJ joule output than most other mopa of the same power. Mine is right at 1mj like most Q-switched of the same power and the majority of 30 watt mopa's I looked at were .5-.6mJ output. Be sure and ask for the fiber source being used and/or go directly to their website, JPT in my case, and get their specs to compare models. I ruled out a couple companies right out of the gate because they wouldn't supply the -L model I asked for.

Now... wait for it... I found a Waveform reference sheet. These waveform settings come from the StellarMark IFII and SPI series fiber literature. The SPI image doesn't give specific ns pulse width except in the graph, which isn't very useful, but it shows that they both use the same settings. It make me wonder if the StellarMark is using a SPI source. I think other companies using the Waveform nomenclature are using similar settings.

What users with Waveform settings can garner from this is that if I say I'm using a setting of 90 power, 30 khz, 250ns to deep engrave or cut metals, you would choose Waveform 0 which shows 35kHz and 250ns. Likewise if I say I'm Annealing at 25 power, 200khz, 13ns, you could choose the closest settings which would be Waveform 28 at 250khz 9ns. If you look at the 20HHS and 40HHS columns you'll notice there are some differences between the two sources but they are close enough to get you similar results. There are times that a several NS (nanosecond) difference will have a totally different effect so you still have to experiment but hopefully this will get you in the ballpark. My JPT source uses NanoSecond NS instead of Waveform and both NS and KHZ can be set separately. I can set any frequency between 2 to 2000kHz the NanoSecond value is a little different. Any NS value can be set but it defaults to the closest value of 2,4,6,9,13,25,35,45,60,80,100,150,200,250. If I set a value of 50ns I'm assuming it rolls back to 45, or whatever the closest value us.



Waveforms.JPG Waveforms SPI.JPG


Enjoy,

[Neville Stewart]

Great info Jeff thank you. Do you have a website or FB page?

[Darren Wilson]

@ Jeff...Thanks for the chart!!