Hi, I am trying to make my laser cut through a 1cm plywood board. I tried various settings but I don’t seem to come out with a good solution:
The machine is an atomstack a20 and it’s said to cut through 1,5cm thick plywood. I have a board of 1cm and I tried these settings (see pics).
The blue line on the two crosses is the only one that came through, even though the shape itself didn’t and it was the same vel and power…
Seems like the green one was the one that managed through but only partially nd anyway it burnt badly the surface. I made other attempts prior this.
Any help on how to set the machine to work correctly?
edit: I also have a air assist to help with the cut
and a matrix panel (instead of honeycomb, I think the matrix works better)
The A20 seems to have 20W optical power output. That’s not enough to really cut 10mm plywood. You can, but as you experienced, it’s more burning than anything else.
Plywood is containing a lot of glue and there are many different types of it. If you need to cut 10mm ply, make sure it’s officially laser-grade plywood. Those use a glue that is easier to cut. Standard plywood won’t cut well. For cutting 10mm ply, I only use 60W or 70W diode lasers, nothing below.
A 20W laser is great to cut up to 6-8mm of plywood. I would not go beyond this. The values the manufacturer’s mention is usually using solid basswood, which is the lightest wood available that you can nearly cut with a butter knife. So it’s not a realistic value.
If you still want to try, go much faster, like 600-1000 mm/min and increase the number of passes (10-20, I guess). This will give a cleaner cut.
Additionally, your beam size doesn’t look very well, did you focus properly?
thank you for prompt response, didn’t know there was plywood made for lasercut.
Actually, to focus I understand I have to put the spacer that came with the machine, between the laser and the wood panel and lower the laser until it touches the spacer. Is it right?
this, it’s 1cm thick
I think so. I don’t own that laser, but it’s usually done like this. If you have a thick material, you can also lower this distance to focus in the middle of the workpiece, not the surface. This might help here as well.
yeah I don’t have an autofocus but I get I can lower it a couple mm for the beam to be cutting lower.
another question though, how can I be sure the beam is in focus other than the spacer?
and also, I have some plywood panels that are 4mm thick but I doubt it’s made for kaser cutting, bought them at brico (dunno if there are in your country, it’s kind of a home depot)
The only way to actually determine the perfect focus is to do a ramp test. Put the workpiece or the laser head at different distances and compare the beam width. Select the distance with the smallest width.
At 4mm that should be ok anyhow, since 20W is enough to cut it easliy. Be aware that if you do your testing, that you usually should add an additional pass to the settings because the glue inside is distributed unevenly and there might be places where the beam doesn’t get through if the main setting is borderline cutting.
