Hi guys, thank you for allowing me to post on this forum. Please may I ask for assistance. I bought the Ortur Laser master 2 20W (which through this forum I was able to understand that its in fact a 5.5w diode laser) and have been playing around with the settings. Able to engrave on all different materials, which I love and able to cut through 2-3mm plywood like its butter. The problem I am experiencing is every ones general question, which is "How to cut through 3mm MDF. I am at wits end. I have gone through the forum from top to bottom, left to right. Tried all the settings suggested but being new to laser cutting and engraving (I have always played with CNC routering and so forth), just unable to get it to cut 3mm MDF. Please be gentle if possible. I have also tried cutting with air-assist, from cutting at 600mm/min to 100mm/min but just no luck. I have tried “cut through” also with no luck. I have tried from 60% power all the way up to 100% power. I know there is something small I am missing. The only result I am getting is a square about 0.5mm cut in and seriously burned. Please can you assist.
Hi Jacques - since you mention it’s new; the LM2 doesn’t come with air-assist hardware. Did you add that yourself?
Hi MakerNick, yes i did.
Jacques,
would you mind sharing the details of your air assist set up?
MDF is very dense compared to normal wood, and has a lot of glue in it holding it together You might need multiple passes at very low speed to cut it. Try 2 passes, 100% power, 3.3 mm/sec. This is the speed suggestion for Darkly Labs Emblaser 2 machine, which is similar in power to yours.
I cut mdf in several passes. After each pass, I remove the ash from the cut with a toothpick. With this method, the cut along the edges is not charred and is obtained even.
Hi, Jacques. I did some experimenting just yesterday with my Master Laser 2 and 2mm mdf. It does seem to behave differently than plywood. I wanted to cut through without charring so using LighBurn I set my speed\power to 20\100. At those settings it took 175+ passes to cut through the mdf. I did not clear ash as someone else suggested here, and ended up with a black edge that is pretty smooth and no charring on the face of the piece. Hope this helps.
So I pretty much trust lightburn users since you have at least discovered lightburn and how great it is. Can any of you post a few pics of how good the Ortur is? all of the reviews are really horribly produced as are most in the 3D printing, CNC and Laser world. I use a pretty nice laser at work along with a snapmaker at home and besides the wattage difference and what that entails (I have access to a 500w machine at work and some very expensive 3D printers vs. my heavily modded crealty ender that pretty much outprints them) . So in short what is this thing really capable of, I dont want to hijack the thread but it’s so hard to find good reviews of things these days.
