Burning through materials

So I tried my 2.5w 3018 on paper and got it to burn.

Now my son wants me to engrave his phone case. We decided to try on an old soft rubber one although he uses a hard plastic one right now. So I made a few trials on soft rubber.

  1. 100 mm/sec at 20% = it marks the rubber in a way that if you place it at an angle or with a light source behind it you can see it clearly.

  2. 100 mm/sec at 50% = pretty much the same mark.

  3. 80 mm/sec at 20% = same mark

  4. 80 mm/sec at 50% at 1mm thickness = darker mark. Basically the same with a blackish burn-out mark around it.

  5. 80 mm/sec at 50% at 1mm thickness with 3 pases = same mark as #4.

What should I focus on more in order to get the laser to cut through?

for a diode those speeds are waay too fast. i would try down in the 15-20mm/s or slower. Also make sure your dot is focused to the smallest it can get.

OK does the seeing for speed per cut layer get overriden by another seeing else where because I’ve brought down from 100 to 20 and I see very little difference

OK I lowered it to 10mm/sec and it messed up my cut. It basically melted the rubber (although it didn’t cut thru).

In this case I think it would be better to make various cuts. I’ll keep at it. In the end it might just not be feasible with this laser and this material.

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