Hi Everyone,
I am looking at purchasing a new Cam Five Laser which has dual 80w lasers option! (or single). Does anyone out there have any experience or knowledge on the benefits or problems with a dual head laser?
Any help would be appreciated!
The advantages of a dual laser tube machine are determined by the form factor i.e.,
- If the machine a dual laser machine with a combining / cross polarization beam to one head, this type of machine can have two types of lasers (such as CO2 and YAG) for processing different materials
- If the machine a dual laser machine with a combining / cross polarization beam to one head, this type of machine could combine the power of two identical laser sources for “Super Speed”
- If the machine is a dual tube dual / independent head type, each head is usually designated to half of the working area and the controller in these machines can effectively process a job over the two heads and tubes simultaneously (reducing the processing time)
There are other configurations, but those examples cover a lot of ground.
I’d say it is not worth the frustration. I got one started. It will only burn with one of the lasers on half the deck. Neither the vendor nor lightburn are being helpful yet in addressing the setup. More to follow…
I finally learned how to set up the two lasers so they can work independently by layer (I used the term independently loosely, since they are tied to the same belt…). Since my origin is in the upper right and my laser 1 is on the right, my laser 2 offset is -525 (or something like that).
There are definite issues with turning on the 2nd laser in Lightburn and using the controls on the Cut screen within Lightburn – unexpected things can easily happen to the underlying layer instructions, turning on and off both the lasers for the layers. The current 2 laser interface for Lightburn is very error prone. Validating the layers use of the laser is a fairly easy, manual process if you have only a few layers but if you have 20 layers… it is very tedious, checking each layer and ensuring that the right laser is on for each laser and hoping you didn’t accidentally hit the enable switch on the Cut screen.
I have now turned off laser 2, moved my two laser heads together as close as possible and adjusted my device settings (in the vendor settings area) so that my X axis table width is now 900mm.
The laser now works like a normal single laser system - Ouch!
If I ever need to go into manufacturing (doing the same design on both sides of the laser), I can turn the second laser back on and move it back to the original offset. I need to document this process and put it out here, so others don’t have to learn through the school of hard knocks.
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