Hey folks. First time posting. I just got my 50w Chinese model set up and running. I’ve been watching tons of videos and reading on here and other groups.
My biggest thing before I get started is trying to figure out the power and speed settings to use. I saw this “power scale” someone shared on Facebook and figured I would try it out for my first run and this might give me an idea on my settings going forward. I did this before researching on here and watching the “power scale” video and such. See attached images. You can see the boxes all burnt the same and they went about . 200 deep too! Also with “Shade according to Power” flipped on, I see now that it shows all at 100% and that’s what the power scale setting was.
My question is, was all of this because I didn’t use the Power Scale setting under properties for each box?
The speed shown is “12”, but I can’t see enough to tell if that is mm/sec or something else. If it’s mm/sec, that’s quite slow, and probably a good part of the trouble. You don’t have to use the power scale thing to make these - it’s just to help out when you need more settings than you have layers.
Yes, it was 12 mm/sec. I based it off another one I saw but he had his at 700 mm/min. Any other tips on selecting speeds and power? I have a ammeter being delivered. Hopefully I can get it set up and determine what my max power should be too.
I saw another discussion about using line instead of fill and I think you or someone else mentioned that you can enable an option to shade in a box even though it’s a line?
You should definitely increase speed. What I did, when I got my laser, was to make a few squares similar to this, except I put it at a 20% power (I’ve got a 150w tube) and then tried different speeds. After that, when I got a general idea of the capabilites, I did the speed/power matrix in 5% and 25 mm/s increments. That should give you a good idea how your laser behaves on a material.
Also, keep in mind, you can change the increments as you wish, they don’t have to be 5% and 25 mm/s.
Another question…if the power scale was set to 100%, even though I didn’t mess with it, isn’t that 100% of the power designated? So if I have one column and power was set to 50%, wouldn’t that still be 50%? if so, why do they all still look the same?
Also, if you don’t want to use power scale, what do you do? Set it to zero?
