I am new to the laser community and am super excited to learn more and improve my work.
I am trying to determine a good power setting for a bamboo cutting board I am making for my sister. I generated a matrix and ran it through the laser. When it finished the engraved area wasn’t flat. Rather it has raised lines running through the areas that are supposed to be flat.
They look like they didn’t get hit the same by the laser leaving them raised. My machine is a new Boss Laser 1420 70W CO2 laser. Here are the settings I was using.
You certainly do not need that much power to engrave. You are getting way too much smoke and actual damage. You will need to increase the number of lines per inch to get more level surface where you engrave. Line interval would need to be less also.
That’s right, but the two options are related. If you set “Line Interval”, “Lines per Inch” is set automatically and vice versa. 0.1mm line interval gives 254 lines per inch, which I think is a good starting point for all tests.
As Ferg also mentions, your settings for power and speed are also not the optimal starting point for a material test. I always start “quietly” with power approx. 20% of my tubes max power and a moderate speed. The speed increases until the lines get too much overflow at the ends, however, it is very much dependent on one’s machine quality. With my new OMT, I will not come close to what you have set your machine to.
