Fiber Laser Initial Impressions: It's slower than people suggest

[Ross Moshinsky]

My biggest take away, the speed can be massively exaggerated. The vast majority of videos posted are sped up 4-20x making the machines look as if they're flying. The reality is, I've found it to be exaggerated. 2000mm/sec is 78in/sec for example, which is a fairly fast speed on the fiber. This is faster than Chinese CO2's, but on par or slower than most Western CO2 lasers. The biggest difference: A CO2 laser you can load up the bed full of parts but with a fiber laser, you're typically limited to under 11.8"x11.8".

Next week I'll finally be able to run the job I bought the machine for due to the plates taking 8 days longer than expected. I now expect the job to take 2x longer than I expected. Now that's obviously on me, but I think it's a valid heads up, that not only is the machine speed not as fast as it appears on videos, it also requires constant attention changing out parts.

I'll maybe give an update next week when I've finished this job and maybe my opinion will have changed. I have my doubts.

At this point, I'd only go with a fiber if you need to eat into metal or hard coatings like knives and guns. In addition, I think I'm going to push a lot of my brass engraving to the fiber in the future. On text, it's a bit faster than my CNC rotary engraving but allows me to use any TTF font vs just engravers fonts and also, on logos and big text, it's a huge difference. I did a logo playing around that took 2-3 minutes that would easily take 10+ on the rotary, and it got all the detail easily. I just hit it with acid after to darken. I don't go for crazy depth. Just enough to acid darken.

[Bill George]

Go over to the LightBurn Galvo Facebook forum and do some reading. You will learn a lot as I did. My first fiber was 5 years ago and very little support and EZCAD only, things have changed.

[Kev Williams]

Sometimes these machines are going to be slower than other ways of marking or engraving, but even then, and especially considering tool engraving, one simple truth saves tons of time: A laser beam never needs sharpening!
I just did a job, some 4 x 8" blackened carbon steel plates I engraved for a local company they're using as machine ID plates. These plates were tougher to fiber engrave than stainless, not sure if they were pre-hardened or if carbon steel is just plain that tough, but the one plates took 16 minutes each to fiber engrave. I was expecting more like a minute! I COULD have tool engraving them, but that would've taken probably 6 to 8 minutes, and I'd have to spend time removing the tool, sharpening it, replacing it and re-zero-ing it for each plate. The fiber took awhile, but that 16 minutes freed me up to run THREE other machines while each plate was running. Something to be said for that!

But for many jobs these machines are simply blazing fast.... S0, Just made a quick video for you and the guys, Ross! It's private meaning HERE is the only link to it, just saying because I'll be deleting it from Youtube shortly

[Ross Moshinsky]

Would you mind sending that EZCad file? My laser appears to be moving much slower than that. I'd like to do a like for like comparison to see if it's something on my EZCad configuration's side.

[Kev Williams]

Ezcad files are fairly HUGE, and zipping them doesn't reduce them enough to upload here, so, how about this--
Below are 3 corel files in sections, when put together will add up to this:
starwarsdesign.jpg
startwars p1.cdr
startwars p2.cdr
startwars p3.cdr

--I downloaded this from The Creek a couple years ago, not sure from where exactly but it was supposed to be NOT a copyright issue, and was intended to be downloaded and played with-- best I recollect--

Anyway- It's 3" diameter as saved, which is great for fibering-- to be able to even fit it here I had to break it into 3 fairly equal sections so each file was within the Creek's download limits...
So, open the 3 corel files, group, then cut or copy what's in #2 and paste it into #1, do the same for #3, then you'll have the whole thing
--then export it as a DXF file to use on your fiber. The DXF file will be close to 20mb so it'll take a few seconds to load up--

It's really cool, highly detailed, and all single lines, no hatching. I make one these on scrap black trophy aluminum for my customers who want to see the machine work--

-On my machines, it takes just under 20 seconds to engrave it all at 3" tall. Settings are 1500 speed, 100% power and whatever lower freq you like, I like 35kHz myself as a default...

And below here is a list of my DEFAULT PARAMETERS for my fiber, and it's just the 'upper' parameters. YOUR parameters will be in your main fiber folder, in a folder named PARAM, the file you want is the "MarkParam.lib" file, open yours- you may get a message that your computer doesn't know how to open it, just use NOTEPAD to open it if that happens. What I mean by "upper", is that my parameters listed are my saved default parameters, note the list starts with [Default]. Once the default parameters are listed, the list continues with a [qq] section, then a [new] section, these 2 are factory default "user saved" settings, settings the user actually saves will follow these in the list-- I just left those off this list. These parameters will change and be saved any time you change your own defaults.

Use my list to compare to yours. If you want, make a copy of your MarkParam.lib file, and save it in the same folder so you have a copy of your original. Take my list, copy it, then in your original file, delete your [default] list then pasted in MY list. When you start the machine it'll run with MY basic settings--

OR you can just compare mine to yours and see if there's any glaring differences and change a few things---

my params:

[LASERMODE]
YAG=1

[Default]
LOOP=1
MARKSPEED=1.500000e+003
POWERRATIO=1.000000e+002
FREQ=35000
STARTTC=120
LASEROFFTC=135
ENDTC=150
POLYTC=85
JUMPSPEED=4.000000e+003
JUMPPOSTC=10
JUMPDISTTC=85
m_nMinJumpDelayTCUs=10
m_nMaxJumpDelayTCUs=85
m_dJumpLengthLimit=1.000000e+001
ENACCMODE=1
BreakAngle=8.900000e+001
ENDCOMP=0.000000e+000
ACCDIST=0.000000e+000
POINTTIME=1.000000e-001
CURRENT=1.000000e+000
PULSEMODE=0
PULSENUM=1
FLYSPEED=0.000000e+000
YAGMODE=48
QPULSEWIDTH=1.000000e+001
STEPLEN=2.000000e-002
STEPDELAY=100
SPIWAVE=0
m_nFiberPWIndex=0
WOBBLEMODE=0
WOBBLEDIAMETER=0.025000e+000
WOBBLEDIST=0.05000e-001
m_bEndAddPt=0
m_nEndPointNum=1
m_dEndPointDist=1.000000e-002
m_dEndPointTime=1.000000e+000
m_nEndPointCyc=1
m_dPointDist=5.000000e-001
m_nMaxLoopNum=100
m_bEnableWeldWave=0
m_dWeldWavePower0=1.000000e+002
m_dWeldWavePower1=0.000000e+000
m_dWeldWavePower2=0.000000e+000
m_dWeldWavePower3=0.000000e+000
m_dWeldWavePower4=0.000000e+000
m_dWeldWavePower5=0.000000e+000
m_dWeldWavePower6=0.000000e+000
m_dWeldWavePower7=0.000000e+000
m_dWeldWaveWidthMs0=1.000000e+001
m_dWeldWaveWidthMs1=0.000000e+000
m_dWeldWaveWidthMs2=0.000000e+000
m_dWeldWaveWidthMs3=0.000000e+000
m_dWeldWaveWidthMs4=0.000000e+000
m_dWeldWaveWidthMs5=0.000000e+000
m_dWeldWaveWidthMs6=0.000000e+000
m_dWeldWaveWidthMs7=0.000000e+000
m_nLasetExtOutputIndex=0

[John Lifer]

These things have their place, but it is alongside the CO2 in my opinion. The guys that are trying to laser PC cups are spinning their wheels in my opinion. IF, and ONLY IF you have a simple file on ONE std color you are doing and you can get the setup perfect are the fibers the correct tool. Small logo on a rounded surface. Anything large, the CO2 just does way more quality of an engraving. No lines, no burns, no blackened sections because you are annealing an area. And yes, in most cases you are working on that machine alone. But I've got a customer that sends me plates to engrave that are 12x4" and I'm doing 8 inch wide text on them. Deep so he can bead blast after welding onto his machines. So can't use just quick surface or anneal as he doesn't want a black. 10 to 15 minutes each, I can sure go to another machine while it runs them. Little items, 2 to 5 seconds each, load up and use jigs to run 10 to 36 each. Got some little bells today to engrave. 12 seconds each, (got to go thru a plating) good money on a lot of items.

[Bill George]

With Lightburn Galvo you can engrave cups or curves without a Rotary in a limited basis. With a lens that covers a wide area like mine 200x200 mm it can do a 50 mm or so engraving. With a different lens you can go to a larger size. I suggest going to Facebook Lightburn Galvo group for more info.

[Kev Williams]

The problem with engraving around an arc, is that the actual linear distance in the axis of the arc continually decreases from the centerline outward, but un-manipulated graphics do not- what this means then, is that as travel progresses across the shrinking arc, what you're engraving grows LA R G E R -- to compensate you need to be able to proportionally compress the graphic you're engraving from the outside-in...

Similarly, when rotary engraving tapered items on a C02 laser, such as an aluminum shot glass, and you want/need 'straight' text/graphics on the sides, you need to 'fix' the graphic... this is actually easy in Corel, using their 'add perspective' tool.
First, draw an accurate representation of the tapered item, place the logo on it where you'll engrave it,
then ROTATE the logo 180, then using the Add Perspective tool, move the bottom sides inward to match the taper,
then rotate the logo back again- when you engrave the reverse-tapered logo onto the item,
the sides of the logo will be parallel
taperfix.jpg

BUT, I don't know how to proportionally compress text or graphics from the outside in to compensate for the shrinking engraving area that occurs when going down a radiused curve. Such a program would be GREAT for engraving 2/3 across the diameter of a flask without rotating using a 300/420 lens that will stay in focus!

I just got done with my 1000th flask engraving a manually pieced-together logo by fiber and rotary using the 'rotary text engraving' option. It involved several tweaks to get the pieces to fit right, but it was well worth it; to engrave the logo 2x in my GCC via rotary- 2x being necessary to fully remove the powdercoating, took 3 minutes 40 seconds...
2x on the fiber rotary, 38 seconds total...

Some graphics, due to shape & complexity, just can't be done via rotating on a fiber. Being able to re-shape the text/graphics to counter taper and arc shift in order to be able to laser in a 2D flat-plane, THAT would be damn cool!

So, can lightburn do this 'reshaping'-?

[Bill George]

Kev its a built in function in Lightburn and it gets good reviews. I can post a page from the docs. Link to PDF Documentation starts on Page 201. FYI if your going to download and try Lightburn be aware it will rename or relocate your EZCAD driver! Either install on another computer or find a way to 100% back up your EZCAD driver and program. I see the link I posted has been removed???

https://lightburnsoftware.com/

Cylinder.JPG

[Steve Utick]

Kev its a built in function in Lightburn and it gets good reviews. I can post a page from the docs. Link to PDF Documentation starts on Page 201. FYI if your going to download and try Lightburn be aware it will rename or relocate your EZCAD driver! Either install on another computer or find a way to 100% back up your EZCAD driver and program. I see the link I posted has been removed???

I will add that while LightBurn does use a different driver to run the connection to the board, that it just disassociates it with the board. It's a very easy process to swap the driver back so that you can use EZCad again. It's all outlined in the official LightBurn documentation on how to swap back and forth between drivers as well. It also does no modifications to the EZCad software install. Although, since the availability of LightBurn for Galvo Lasers, I haven't found the need to actually swap back yet. :-)

[Bill George]

I will add that while LightBurn does use a different driver to run the connection to the board, that it just disassociates it with the board. It's a very easy process to swap the driver back so that you can use EZCad again. It's all outlined in the official LightBurn documentation on how to swap back and forth between drivers as well. It also does no modifications to the EZCad software install. Although, since the availability of LightBurn for Galvo Lasers, I haven't found the need to actually swap back yet. :-)

Sorry Steve but that did not work for me. I had a Yell of a time getting EZCAD back and running, I finally installed on another computer to get the info I needed. Kev has a lot resting on his fibers and work, would hate to have him lose it. FYI the EZCAD and Lightburn driver both have the same names. Ezcad2 Driver. No I will never go back either, paid my $150 and very happy to give the work to a US programmer and company.

[Kev Williams]

I'm running 4 C02 lasers and 4 fiber lasers, Corel x3 and x4 are my base graphics programs. I'm very "used to" EzCad, but I'm very curious about lightburn as a replacement for it. IF for no other reason than (I'm assuming from what I've read) it would be nice to NOT have to create duplicate text and/or logos when I absolutely positively HAVE to have more than the THREE hatch routines available in EzCad. I use 6 hatch routines quite often for deep engraving, which requires copies of what I'm engraving on top of each other- it's not all that problematic, unless I'm tweaking the location of something, and CLICK on something I'm moving rather than GROUPING it, which only moves the front-most object; and if I don't notice, then I engrave the first half of the object in a different place than the second half! Usually, that's not a good thing

As to replacing Corel with Lightburn, nah. Corel can do WAY more than I ever use it for, and what I DO use it for I can pretty much do in my sleep these days. And FWIW, the only reason I keep Corel x3 around, is because x3 will correctly center text that comes in DXF files customers send me, whereas x4 will ALWAYS Left-Justify text, whether it's supposed to be or not.
to wit--
--this is a DXF job as save in my "Nano-cad" aka autocad-clone program:
xcad.jpg

This is this file as imported into Corel x3,
centered up just like the original DXF file-
x3.jpg

Same exact file as imported into x4,
but all the text is LEFT justified-?
x4.jpg

I've never found a fix for this, other than just open my DXF's in x3.
Besides this dumb issue, x4 is miles better than x3, and does everything I've ever needed it to, so I've never had the desire to upgrade it.

But used to EzCad or not, I may just give Lightburn a try. ?, do I need more licenses for each machine?
(maybe I should just go to lightburn.com )

[Bill George]

One license covers two machines and more can be added if needed. You can download and use a working trial for 30 days... but like I said above put on another machine and you need to copy over markcfg7 file (in the EZCAD Plug directory) and that carries your settings over, and at least it worked on mine. No you still need Corel as least I do anyway!! No I am not an expert on Lightburn I just started using.

[John Lifer]

I've been curious about LB but I've not tried to install once I saw on line that there were a LOT of issues with swapping back and forth. And Bill's suggestion is not a suggestion, it is for sure a requirement to install LB on a different computer than your regular computer. All my computers won't allow win11 and are old. I have plenty of issues with USB connectivity anyway and while I'm interested, there has been zero reason to convert to LB.
5 plus years of Ezcad files that can't be used with LB is reason enough to stick with Ezcad.

[Bill George]

I've been curious about LB but I've not tried to install once I saw on line that there were a LOT of issues with swapping back and forth. And Bill's suggestion is not a suggestion, it is for sure a requirement to install LB on a different computer than your regular computer. All my computers won't allow win11 and are old. I have plenty of issues with USB connectivity anyway and while I'm interested, there has been zero reason to convert to LB.
5 plus years of Ezcad files that can't be used with LB is reason enough to stick with Ezcad.

I solved that issue by installing EZCAD on the Win10 side of a MacBook Pro running parallels. But LB will work fine on a MacBook Pro from what I understand and it does not require the EZCAD driver. I think sometime in the future the programmers will add a converting function to LB so you can use your old files.