there are a lot of tests for these hobby lasers on the internet. however i find the significance and especially the duration of most of them very unsatisfying.
by far the best test i have found up to now that is extremely informative about the size/shape of the laser spot and the mechanics of the laser comes from the developer of the lasergrbl software. and the nice thing is that the test is done in 2-5 minutes.
ideal as test material is a dark anodized small alu-plate - but also these dark painted aluminium business card blanks work - and certainly also other materials.
i had tried two devices so far (10% power @ 200mm/min in lightburn) - a sculpfun s9 and a 5.5 watt air-assist laser module from genmitsu that they offer for their small cnc mills. the genmitsu delivered what i think was a fantastic result for this price range.
so here are my results. on the left the genmitsu - on the right the sculpfun s9. i had used the test file once in original size (approx. 20x20mm) and once in double size (approx. 40x40mm).
would be great if others here would make the same test on their devices and post pictures in this thread. so there would be a really good decision aid for the working accuracy of the different manufacturers and models.
I will add my results once I finished them. I can provide S9, S10 and S30-20W of Sculpfun lasers. But I wanted to add that https://hobbylasercutters.com/ also test using similar metal engraving, which might be worth a look.
great - it would be awesome to see all three lasers in comparison!
ok. then I post here again my results of the hobbylasercutters test. left genmitsu and right sculpfun s9 (60% power @ 200mm/min in lightburn).
however i find that the hobbylasercutters tests although they take a much longer time are rather less informative than the one of the lasergrbl. but it doesn’t hurt to have several comparisons.
Oh, I didn’t mean to use their test files but they use a steel / aluminum test as well to test accuracy in case you want to see additional results of other lasers. To see the accuracy/ line widths they measured.
this thread was just meant to see the whole thing on the basis of the lasergrbl-test which i find much better faster and clearer. furthermore it is not limited to lightburn users as an svg-file.
definitely looking forward to your results of the whole sculpfun models!
I did some tests with the S10 and S30-20W (just very short tests, no tuning). Even last week, but I didn’t find an easy way to do a picture/scan of it. How did you do that? I might try again with my smartphone, but I think I need a holder, since without it already looks blurry because of my hand movement
But you can see clearly that the 20W is much worse in details, but still ok, I think.
thanks for posting! of course it is difficult to make conclusions based on the current pictures.
but it looks like your two models have a far less rectangular laser spot than my s9. although your models also don’t have nearly the advertised almost square spot. in any case, yours don’t have the problem that the circles are not closed cleanly as mine. it would also be interesting to see your s9.
i had simply put the alu-test-samples on a flatbed scanner and then made a resized jpg in photoshop.
