Hi there! I promise I searched and can’t find anyone else dealing with this so I’m asking. I have a D1 Pro 10W and just got the IR laser for it, running the latest software release of Lightburn. I used it on some chrome tools and it worked well, so I changed to the rotary and tried to do a painted tumbler. It wasn’t doing well at all so I decided to run a test grid.
I had a single column all at 100% power, and then 10 squares high with varying speeds. It laid it out correctly, but when it started doing the squares, it seemed like the speed never changed from square to square. I had it going from 600mm/min to 18,000mm/min so the ramp up in speed would have been obvious.
When I hit play in the preview window, it definitely looked like it sped up progressively like it should have. Anyone have any thoughts on this? It may be a moot point because even as slow as 600mm/min it didn’t burn through the paint so I think it might not even do what I’m trying to, but I still need to figure this issue out incase we decided to keep the IR module and do glass and/or metal with it.
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer, and have a great day!
The range of speeds that you’ve listed is much higher than even the claimed maximum speed of your machine which looks to be 400 mm/s. In reality, you’re unlikely to get even 400 mm/s in normal conditions.
Since the lower end of your range is already higher than your maximum speed, you’re likely never seeing anything more than 400 mm/s which is why you don’t get additional variation at higher set speeds.
Are you saying you should have said 600 mm/min - 18000 mm/min or that you converted to mm/s before listing?
If the former are you absolutely certain you’re not seeing a difference in speed? How are you determining that?
If so, can you regenerate the material test then push the “Save gcode” button in the Material Test window, save to a .txt file, and then upload that file? Will review to make sure that the g-code is commanding the speed changes.
That’s correct, I should have said /min, not /sec, (I was at work and not in front of the machine to make sure I was right.)
I’m certain that the speeds weren’t changing because before I remembered about the Material Test feature (I’m a newb) I tried it on different pieces with progressively increasing speeds and it was pretty obvious. I also could clearly see the curser in the Preview playback speeding up square by square but the machine itself didn’t do that.
I suspect much of your issue, is it’s only a 2W IR source… Switching from a chromed tool to a mug might mean you have to really slow it down for removal of a mugs coating. There is a difference in marking something, compared to removing a coating.
Take the speeds you’re using and compare them to you 10 or 20W visible laser. Both should have similar absorption rates. If your 20W machine worked on mugs, I’d slow it down 10 times.
A 2W is only 1/10th of a 20W module… just because it will absorb IR, doesn’t mean you can run fast.
Might want to read this post on mugs with a normal laser, you will have to run slower… and might need to use a smaller interval. He mentions having to slow down to the 50 - 100mm/m speeds with a 10W machine. That’s only 5 times more powerful.
If you cut the interval in half, the job will require twice as long to complete.
Hey sorry, I had to go out of town for work. Here’s the GCODE file for the test. Thanks for any help you can provide! IR material test g code.gc (3.3 MB)
There are definitely changes in speed in the gcode so that part is correct. One thing that’s odd is that there seems to be no Y-axis movements at all in this file? I wouldn’t expect this to generate anything recognizable. Is this working at all?
Is this Material Test generated from LightBurn or is this design from something else?
Yes this is just from the Lightburn Material Test Generator in the Laser Tools dropdown. There is no y axis because I’m doing it with the rotary enabled because I’m trying to work out how to do tumblers with it. I should have mentioned that in the OP, that’s my bad.
Sorry for the delay. I have verified that the speeds change on a flat test grid. I guess I could run one with a huge variance in speed with the rotary to see if it does it and I was just running the range too tight or something. I’ll keep you posted.
Okay I might have just stumbled into the answer here. Forgive my ignorance on the subject.
I just did a few test grids on some flat 2024-T6 aluminum and when I had a set power and varying speed, I got different outcomes, but when I set varying power and set speed, it was all the same. When I set it up, the instructions I read said to set it to “constant power mode”. Should I have assumed that that makes it run the IR laser at 100% power all the time and that the only variation I can make it speed? If so, it would make sense for me to run a wider window for the speed to get a bigger spread and better data. Thoughts?
No. This is incorrect. Constant Power Mode means that variable power control for the laser will be disabled. This variable power is not about the ability to change power levels. It refers to dynamic change in power to automatically adjust to changes in speed due to acceleration/deceleration. It’s meant to allow for consistent burn in spite of acceleration. You generally do not want to enable Constant Power Mode for most purposes. There are specific conditions where you would want to enable this. I’m not familiar with the function of xTools IR module, however. There may be a reason why constant power mode is suggested for that use. Having said that, it’s not clear to me that xTool lasers actually even support Constant Power Mode as their controller implementations are non-standard and tend to have their own peculiarities and bugs.
It seems to me what you’re facing is the much narrow range of tolerance that IR diode lasers typically have compared to blue lasers. IR lasers have an extremely tight window for focus. I believe this also extends to power.
Start with getting your focus dialed in. Then work on identifying ranges of power and speed that get you generally workable results. Then narrow in on those ranges with a wider set of material tests to get a finer tuned viewed of workable values.
Okay that makes sense. I’m not sure why it said to do that, but when I didn’t have constant power enabled the laser wouldn’t fire so that’s got to have something to do with it. I’ll work on figuring out how to make sure the focus is right and go from there. I can’t imagine the focus is off by much being that the machine works great but I’ll learn how to use the ramp test and give her a shot.
