Lately i’ve been doing glass mirrors. However, unlike other jobs, cutting/engraving wood, engraving back of mirrors makes nozzle to “grow a thick beard” to the point where beam doesn’t get through. I get streaking when that happens.
My air assist is your typical aquarium air pump, which does its job for the most part, lens keeps clean, no flame-ups when cutting, etc. Extraction is a small bouncy castle impeller blower, which also does its job fairly well evacuating fumes in the cabinet.
On recent 1+ hour job i needed to pause and “wipe the nose” of my laser head every 5 minutes to prevent buildup… Nozzle is about 8mm away from surface.
What can i do on the cheap to prevent “beard growing” on multi-hour jobs where i wont be looking into the machine constantly. I’m about to do a 3+ hour engrave and standing there for all of that is not desired… Nor re-running same job to eliminate streaking.
Well… apparently they do not perform such a good job, right?
Only way to avoid this is better smoke extraction and/or more air pressure from the nozzle.
I have been using one of these Hailea on my smaller laser and that was fine.
On the larger machine I use a air compressor since the Hailea was not powerful enough.
With the Hailea I had this goo in the past as well, but never with the air compressor.
The big downside of the air compressor is the sound and the amount of liters per minute required for your machine. I have bought a 100 liter low noise one a couple weeks ago and since then I am super happy. They are not cheap though…
