Hey all,
Have a CO2 and love it, but I’ve heard that the diode lasers being a different frequency have some better engraving on some materials. Anybody want to give me an idea, true or false?
I have been play a lot with engraving with my CO2 laser. I can get pretty good results but the diode lasers always seem to look better. A lot of the diode engravings I see that look phenomenal took many many hours to do. To do a similar size with mine at the lowest power I can run is less than 30 minutes. So perhaps a lower power CO2 would do better ( mine is 80W ).
I have thought about making a smaller diode laser just for engraving. Either stand alone, mount to my big laser, or mount to my 3D printer.
I think the diodes can switch power levels faster, whether for grey scale or on/off than a CO2 laser, that might help too.
Never thought about doing a CO2 / Diode combo. My big issue would be distance from the gantry to the work. With my current 80W I have around 100mm from gantry to work, and I would abhor loosing work space to mount a Diode laser beside my CO2 head. I do have around 2"+ space on the back of the gantry do to mechanical restrictions, so a back side mount might be doable. Going to have to ask if it’s possible to use my 6445G to control a diode laser.
Maybe Oz or one of the guys could chime in here if they happen to know the feasibility of it.
Search is your friend! 
Thank you for the link. I did a search, but me and searches just but heads. Don’t know what it is, but have about a 2 in 100 luck in getting reliant search results.
Is it possible to externally save that thread? I tried various click combinations and no luck.
On my CO2 laser, I was thinking about making a diode mount that would just replace the lens tube on my laser. Looks like I could let it sit on either side of the mirror assembly and still not have an issue at min X or max X positions.
I was thinking about using the second output of the Ruida, but I think what I would likely do it put in a switch that selects CO2 or diode. In the diode position, the CO2 LPSU would not be powered up. Because the the way I wired up my laser with it’s safety features, this would not be hard to do. This way the CO2 laser can never accidentally fire when the diode is in use.
I just need to investigate what the diodes need for an input to control power.
The other thing to keep in mind that I’m not sure how I want to handle is the windows used for CO2 lasers are not effective protection for diode. So can’t count on those at all, I’m thinking goggles when using the diode. I think most diode machines are exposed and you would need goggles anyway.
Click on the link then save as a bookmark.
Did that, was looking to save it externally, as in a text or pdf or even a jpg on my hard drive. Tried to print it, but only the first few pages showed up in my print preview.
UPDATE: Evidentially The forum and Firefox don’t get along. Pulled the forum up on Internet Exploder and was able to print to pdf.
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