Couple of laser problems

I was trying to engrave some slate coasters today and when they came out the my image seems squished on the Y axis, and also the laser didn’t engrave very well at all, I had it set to 100% power at 60 speed (in/m) it came out super spotty as you can see, from other people I’ve seen online they’re able to get much more clear results with lower power and high speeds. I uploaded the file and some screen shots, hopefully someone can help.

Mando Coaster 2.0.lbrn2 (51.4 KB)

I figured out why everything was squished, I was messing with the rotary yesterday and forgot to switch my settings back to normal :man_facepalming:

I still need help with my power settings though

There are a number of topics that already cover slate engraving that I recommend you search and review. There’s a lot of collected wisdom there which needn’t be repeated.

A couple observations on your specific case:

  1. You list 60in/min for speed. That equates to 1524mm/min which would be quite high for a diode laser on slate. When you compare to others’ numbers, make sure you’re accounting for units. I’ve typically seen people use in the 400mm/min range. Power will scale accordingly.
  2. You haven’t mentioned if you’ve used any sort of surface preparation. That’s covered in the other topics but perhaps something you want to investigate.

Sorry, I will definitely do some more research in that area before i continue on

You should save your grbl configuration via the ‘Edit → Machine Settings’ and use the ‘save’ option to keep a safe copy. You can modify them for the rotary and save them in a separate file for reloading when switching back and forth. Eliminates these types of problems.

Slat can be tricky. Both of the items are slate and one engraves ‘white’ and the other ‘black’.

Good luck.

:smiley_cat:

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