Just curious how the folks here have found using certain places on the X/Y table for placement of the work material ?
I noticed, and makes sense, alot of folks use the back left corner to set up a square for dropping in material or maybe a work jig to engrave or cut.
This makes sense as this is the best point for the mirror distant and it should follow that the laser power transfer has the least lost if there is any… Depending on the work size of course. but certainly better than the right front corner…
I have a larger bed on my Monport130w, 35 x 55 so the far back corner is not the most convenient spot to work with, so I set up front center and did a batch of cut testing to ensure that there was no power loss across the material area as the laser head moved to the right front side on a 18"x18" work area and it seems to be ok… I still question it now and then, but it is probably more my paranoid nature sneaking in…
I am gonna look into the far left closer to the X mirror and see how that goes…’
I use the left back position for my fence, but I can see how that could be difficult on a bed your size. One factor in my decision is that I sometiimes use the front pass through slot to work with longer material and having the fence in the back works better for that.
I don’t think it really matters where you have your fence set up as long as it is locked in place for repeatability. One reason I chose left vs right is my honeycomb bed is smaller than my work area on the right by about 10mm so I would have to start at a position of 15 or so in order to cut through.
Just thought of something when you said repeatability…
Did you secure the honecomb top to the Z axis table? or does it just sit in place with out any issues?
Mine is pretty dang heavy and even trying to center it is a struggle, but still,
was thinking of dropping a couple screws to secure it anyway…
I replaced the honeycomb 1) aluminum, so magnets won’t work 2) it totally destroyed the air flow through the machine 3) pain in the a** to get clean. I use a sheet of steel. I marked drill locations with the laser and drilled them with a drill press.
This gives me locating pins for jigs. The steel wipes clean with a solvent.
I made a couple 3D printed corner holders…10mm off the surface and 5mm edge capture…
the magnets hold it pretty good…
I am printing some smaller corners, same as these less 1 magnet on the ends…
I register against the back right corner of my honeycomb bed. The bed is held in place with 3 precision pins so it can’t move and when removing it and replacing will be back in the same position. Accucary is 0.5mm. This corner is also where my exhaust port is so the smoke has less distance to travel.
I was thinking of designing and 3D printing similar to the 4" corner pieces you have shown. Do the magnets stick down to sheet metal at the bottom of your bed? And the recess capture secures the wood in XYZ position? Since you have a design in .STL format, I would not mind if you posted it.
Yes the magnets grab very well onto the honeycomb…
If I can upload them here tomorrow happy to share the .stl files…
I think I tried before but could not find the upload feature…
Or if there is a PM feature send me your email
This is the upload button. The forum is limited to file types it allows to upload. If it wont allow .stl, append with .txt and it should work. i.e. filename.stl.txt
Three of the four corner supports for the honeycomb bed had pins that stick up and the honeycomb has matching holes. The fit is tight enough so that the honeycomb will not move. The pins have been precisely located so that when I move the laser head to (0,0) (front left) the laser dot will be at the corner. if I tell the laser to move horizontally to say (300,0) it will trace along the lip formed by the U channel that covers the edge of the honeycomb. Similarly, if I go to 0,0 and then tell the laser to move vertically it traces the edge of the lip. So, I can simply drop a piece of wood onto the bed, slide it to the front left corner and locate my artwork in the same corner and run the job.
