Diode vs CO2 for engraving

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! :wink:

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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