I’m just getting started with learning the Lightburn software and I am working on using the laser to put lettering on name plates for the Sea of Galilee boat kits that I produce. With a setting of 600m/minute as a speed rate and 20% power it takes about nine minutes to cut the lettering into a single name plate (6cm x 1.25cm). When I watch the wifi password card video I see that my laser head is moving at a fraction of the speed that the one in the video is moving even though that is set at 300m/min.
According to the Millright site a carve king’s steppers can drive at 4400 mm/min so that is not the limiter. I was having issues with the laser not turning off between objects in cut mode and found a great post on this forum where I sent $32=1 to the machine and that immediately fixed that problem. Since this is a GRBL machine and the lack of shutting off between objects was a GRBL problem is there something else that I need to set to make the machine drive at the speed set?
The video you’re referencing is using a 60w CO2 laser running at 300 mm/second, not 300 mm/minute. 300mm/sec x 60 = 18,000 mm/minute. I wouldn’t suggest attempting that speed with a CNC / diode setup.
I tried setting the feed rate up to 1500 and it seemed to run at the same rate as at 600, just checking to make sure that I don’t have some other setting that needs to be changed or some magic G code (like the $32=1) that will increase or improve performance. Doing one name tag at nine minutes is ok but when you have a grid of 30 if them, that would be a bit on the long side.
In the GRBL settings, look at $110 and $111, as those are your maximum rates. You can edit them in the motor section at the bottom of Edit > Machine Settings in LightBurn.
Those are now at 3500 and 4400 respectively and the laser moves along much faster, thanks!
Oh BTW is there an upper limit of percentage that a laser should be run at. Will it have a shorter life span if run near 100% for doing lettering like this?
