I am an ancient CO2 laser user and have recently started on the Fiber laser sidetrack. I have not even seen a diode laser or CO2 galvo head laser but understand how they can/could be used. So… cranky old man with a fair amount of laser knowledge.
I would like to help and appreciate the helpfulness of this forum, my suggestion may not be helpful or feasible. I spend too much of my remaining hours sorting thru posts of which I have no knowledge to get to the places I can learn or try to help it seems. This forum has become enormous and needs more categories [my opinion of course] or some way to navigate around. Maybe some of the tags could be used? I was deeply invested in the old RDworksforum but did not have any experience with the actual forum per se. Laserworks questions for instance could be their own category. Not trying to ruffle feathers, just attempting to be of help. Thanks Gene Long Live Laserworks and Prosper
Part of the problem: new folks arrive with no knowledge of either laser terminology or forum structure, so the initial problem reports generally fall into the wrong category with misleading or downright incorrect tags. This isn’t their fault, because nobody starts out knowing such esoterica.
Manually fixing categories & tags would become an additional job for someone with better things to do, so IMO those labels are basically useless and built to stay that way.
Post titles seem more useful, although often leaving a lot unsaid.
I scan upward through the Latest posts from whenever I last checked, peeking at anything interesting, then chip in where I can. If folks hit the Reply button on my notes, then a heads-up notice appears under my profile / avatar pic in the upper right corner (you’ll have your own!), but sometimes that doesn’t happen and I lose track of current events.
Welcome aboard!
Thank for the reply- I knew it would not be easy, and would not want to sign up for the job. I will try your recommendation and see how it goes. I was actually on the forum when the Lightburn founder [cannot remember names anymore] and was talking about his vision for LB. I have enough experience to somewhat understand how difficult it was going to be and wished good luck but was surprised when it came to fruition and continue to be a strong advocate and supporter. Gene
I am trying to adapt to your system but still think some categories would be useful- maybe CO2, Diode, Fiber sources? I have only a limited number or hours left on the clock and get impatinet to spend them wisely. Gene
The community creates content at such an astonishing (really, we are humbled) pace that it’s incredibly hard to keep everything categorized and curated perfectly all the time. The Support team would have to be 3x as large.
That said, we’re all ears for improvement suggestions, and if there’s a specific issue or bit of learning you wish to obtain, please make a post outlining it and we’ll be very happy to help.
Off the bat, I think you’ll find this page (amongst others) very useful for learning a bit about each laser source https://docs.lightburnsoftware.com/latest/Explainers/LaserTypes/
Believe it or don’t- I am not trying be a a burr beneath anyone’s saddle. On the old RDworks forum each new member would have to go to a page that explained what was expected of them to participate and verified that they were actual humans. This verbiage you sent me would be a good start- perhaps ask them to check a box or boxes with their machine type. Again, more work- may have to have examples of each machine, probably they have shopped for their machine enough to recognize which category they are in. I will now let this topic rest and try to be helpful rather than a pain. Thanks for what you do.
- Diode: similar to an LED light, a semiconductor is pumped with electrical current to produce light. These are generally lower power, with a very fine focal dot which forms a rectangular shape. These generally make nice engraves, but poor cuts.
- Diode stack/array: combines the power of many diodes into one beam, to overcome some of the downsides of single-diode beams.
- Glass tube: contains a gas that is excited by a DC current to produce a beam. Is cheaper than a Metal RF tube, but needs water-cooling, wears out quicker, and produces a (comparitively) slow “pulsating” beam which has a wider focal dot, and thus is less suited to engraving. The focal dot is round.
- Metal RF tube: contains a gas that is excited by a radio frequency to produce a beam. Is more expensive than a Glass tube, but can be air-cooled, lasts much longer, and produces a more rapid beam-pulse, with a finer focal dot, and is more suited to engraving than Glass tubes. The focal dot is round.
- Fiber: combines several beams into one using fiber optics to generate more power output.