Hey guys… Getting ready to purchase a 50w MOPA from lasersonly but had a question before I pull the trigger. I’m planning on getting lightburn for it as well.
I am getting it to etch knives but my wife may want to mess with it doing different crafty stuff.
Is there a difference in material (metal, glass, wood, plastic) each laser source can etch or are they both pretty much the same?
What do you mean? You only mentioned the fiber…
The frequency of the produced emf beam determines what it will affect…
A visible light laser won’t damage a visually clear item as the energy passes through it without any resistance.
In simple terms the visible light and co2 are generally for natural materials such as wood and leather… fiber is for man made materials… such as metal.
Both of the co2 and fiber lasers are in the IR spectrum, but the fiber is 10X higher in frequency than the co2. Co2 will damage glass, but a fiber will go through it without damage.
Does this make any sense or did I totally misunderstand your question?
Thanks for your response. I do understand that CO2 is normally what is user for everything other than metal, but I have recently come to understand that a 50+watt fiber mopa laser can also etch other material than just metal.
I’m wondering if the JPT laser source being LP vs M7 makes any difference in what materials can be etched other than metal.
Found this online…
“In our common lasers, such as JPT’s LP series, the pulse width is not adjustable, but if you want better and smoother marking results, then you should consider JPT’s M series, The M7 series is the most popular, which is true MOPA technology”
Most hobby lasers are cw (continuous wave) whereas the fiber lasers are pulse lasers.
I have an M60 JPT M7 MOPA fiber from Cloud Ray…
Some sources will not allow adjustments to, what’s referred to as q-pulse, which is the duration of the pulse.
I don’t know what else you can actually use these for, some do types of plastic but it’s generally for metals… that’s what I bought it for…
Most lasers will damage materials outside of the useful range, but it’s not always a good job… However co2, will effectively do acrylic, it’s a man made product…
I’ve tried mine on wood, it does virtually nothing. On mdf it blow holes in the layers as it heats the glue up… it goes right through glass and acrylic without any damage… On a slice of baloney there is no effect, but some very, very slight warming.
These are brass coins from Amazon…
This is from my jpt source manual… you can see it pulses at very high power levels… I’ve had mine since February and I still can’t really drive it… Not only do I have speed/power but now there is frequency and q-pulse to add on to that… I can do great burnt coins from brass, but haven’t really figured out how to put together a clean pass to make it look good.
Don’t know if I answered you or not… you’ll have to advise…
Might be a good idea to be more specific on what you want to use it for… what you gave me to go on isn’t much… if you stick with the co2 for natural materials and fiber for man made, you’ll at least be in the ball park.
In the end you have to pick the type of laser by what you want to do with it.
Fiber lasers are not low cost… I have this one…
That was a great answer and explanation, thank you!!
So I’ll probably just stick with the 50w jpt with lp laser source, it’s already pressing my budget. I just wanted to make sure I wouldn’t regret not getting the 60w with m7 source haha
I don’t know the price difference, but the source and controller are the key elements…
Ensure it’s EZCad2… Lightburn doesn’t support EZCad3 …
Good luck, take care…
Yep it’s ezcad2, thanks for the tips!
What do you intend to lase?
I’ve ended up with 4 lenses… The shorter the lens the smaller the depth of field and smaller dot size. Whereas a longer lens will have a greater depth of field and larger dot size.
The lens that will cover your work is the best. I bought mine for 300mmX300mm, it’s an F420, I think… I use the F160 for 6"X6" tile and the F100 for 70mmX70mm coverage…
A longer lens with purchase will ship a taller column… it’s not easy to extend them but it’s easy to lower a short lens down on a tall column…
Left is a 6"x6" porcelain tile using LBT100 coating. The rest are plain annealing, middle is a stainless steel knife and then stainless dog tags… The color looking annealing usually requires a MOPA type machine… Dog tag done with materials test in Lightburn… I’m only varying the speed and interval…
Check out this video…
Good luck
Thanks for all your help! It will be for laser etching knife blades so it should work perfect for that at least.
