Hi Folks.
Just a quick question.
I have a large 130w 1300x900 laser. I generally put large sheets of pine ply in to work on. I’d love to work with Maple etc but in Australia Pine is all there is unless I pay mega-dollers.
It does have Honeycomb on top of slats, and the smoke extraction is in the space under the honeycomb. I have an aircompressor as well and run the work at about 20psi
The word Sage Due to the power of the laser I run this at speed 500 and 1%. I have tried Air On and Off etc
Does anyone have any addtional idea’s.
I am open to putting fans above the work to give laminar flow.. Putting fans underneath to force ventilate the honeycomb. I can see that the air under the hood is not smoke filled and pretty clear.
When I am doing say 60 of these at ones that is a lot of post prep and sanding.
I’m not convinced that 130Watt is the ideal machine for the job, it’s a bit like using a very large brush to paint a line drawing with…
But, if you have the opportunity to try to increase/optimize the extraction and reduce your compressed air so that it just keeps the lens clean. The air in/out ratio is also quite important. If I open the lid about 2 cm I have a certain negative pressure in the “cabin”. It works best here.
NB. on the top side there “shouldn’t” be that much condensed wood gas at all, is your lens and focus completely perfect? If you have problems with honeycomb like some here have, you can lift your plates up a little so possible reflections don’t hit the underside of your items.
I’ve experimented with these parts here, they work (spread all over) perfectly, but I lose my physical stop/align edges and that makes placement a little more difficult, but can be achieved with a laser pointer by running up and down the edges until the plates are perfectly aligned. Furthermore, I don’t have nearly the problems you show, I manage just fine with a little alcohol on a cloth on the parts that are a little dirty.
With my previous home made laser which was a large format my biggest issue was that at 80w it could not effectively cut at the boundaries of my work, so effectively I could only use half a bed.
So when I brought a new laser I got a 130w. In hind sight I should have gotten a lower beam.
I have added a Diode Laser onto the gantry that works with the Ruida controller so I can use that for really fine lines..
As for Focus and line width - yes.. Both lasers are adjusted to ensure the finest cut width I can get.
It sounds a lot like exterior glued plywood, if that’s what it is then I would expect double the smoke generation when cutting but virtually no difference when engraving.
This is what I get directly out of my machine with 60Watt on 5mm BB plywood. I showed it to the customer and asked if it needs to be sanded/cleaned, he asked if this rustic look could not be highlighted a little more…
This looks like the nozzle air is way too high. It blows the smoke across the wood before it has a chance to float up and be carried away with the air currents. I get the same thing if I forget to reduce the air flow (one machine) or turn off Air Assist (the other machine).
It is the tube that has a lower limit. I have read numbers between 8% to 12%, up to 15% for 100w CO2 machines. Diodes can go as low as 0.1% to 0.25% in a lot of cases.
