Hi everone, new to lasering. I have a Omtech AF2028-80W. was just wondering what the max speed is for this machine… thanks
The best way to find the real max speed for your machine is to do a test. Draw a square, use fill and gradually speed up. When you yourself think that the machine no longer runs nicely or the vibrations/shakes become too violent, then you have found your maximum speed. Subtract 10% from that and you’re good to go.
But, make a little table and write down the time spent to engrave your square, you will find that from a certain speed the total time spent goes up again!
For smaller subjects I am between 200 and 300 mm/s…
If it’s like my 60 W machine, it’s sold as “up to 700 mm/s”, but you can check the actual speeds for each axis in Edit → Machine Settings → Vendor Settings → X Axis → Max Speed with the machine turned on & connected.
You’ll probably find both the X and Y axes set to 500 mm/s, which will seem suspiciously low until you realize the laser head can move at 700 mm/s at a 45° angle:
707 = √ (500² + 500²)
So, yeah, “up to” happens on the diagonal.
How does it look in practice? Say, a 25x25mm square, engraved at 0 degree with line spacing 0.01, how long does it take and at what speed can you engrave it?
(I don’t ask to discuss but to better understand it)
I’m still rebuilding my shop after we moved and can’t run the experiment, but I think it goes like this:
Ruida controllers handle engravings at 0° and 90°, so those will run at whatever the axis speed limits allow. Because the X axis has higher acceleration than the Y axis, the 0° job will take less time than the 90° job. The Preview simulations suggest 1 and 2 minutes, respectively, but apparently ignore the maximum axis speed settings by allowing a layer speed of 700 mm/s .
The controller doesn’t help at the 45° angle implied by the “up to 700 mm/s” claim, so LightBurn must generate all the vectors. Because the laser head must (almost) stop at the end of each pass before moving to the next scan line, I’d expect the job to run really slow.
The Preview simulation at 45° suggests there is no overscan, with all motion entirely contained within the square. If that’s actually what happens (and I have no reason to doubt it), then the engraving will definitely run slowly and look different, because the acceleration & deceleration happen while the controller ramps the laser power to suit.
So the machine can reach 700 mm/s under ideal conditions no job can attain, but the number does make for a great bullet item in the descriptions and has what the politicians call “plausible deniability”. 
I can confirm that scans not done at 0 or 90 degrees will have no overscan applied. Nothing applied in controller and no compensation from LightBurn. Learned this the hard way.
Perhaps that’s a gotcha, because a Fill layer should have uniform motion over the entire scan line.
On the other paw, that may be impossible with a Ruida controller, as the laser tube must go on & off exactly at the pattern borders without changing speed. Three separate vectors aligned along each scan line wouldn’t behave properly, but how else can you synchronize the tube firing with the borders?
Glad I’m not responsible for answering that question! 
Thank you for your response. That’s an interesting topic I think.
On a “normal”, non -modified CO2 laser machine, the speed of normal (0 degree) engraving tasks is highly dependent on the size of the objects. Overscan becomes propportional larger the less the task (engraving path itself) becomes. Unfortunately, I can’t find my test that I have done for not so long, here it am surprised that at relatively small topics the total time already at approx. 200 mm/s get increased. However, I do not have the figures for a large project with long horicontal movements.
45 degrees “conditions” I am aware that you have to choose your tools carefully 
In any case, people probably find it for their machine appropriate speed, where the quality of the engraving and “harmony” of the movements fits together.
My assumption is that either there’s little value in doing this or that the controller doesn’t offer the control to make this happen through software.
The Ruida operates pretty much like a hardware controller. If you change the scan angle to anything other than a multiple of 90 degrees it is now controlled by code generated by Lightburn or RDWorks.
The hardware determines the overscan. The hardware becomes disabled because of the non 90 degree multiple scan angle…
