new to laser cutting using lightburn, im really happy with this piece but noticing slight burning/ghosting? white powder material near letters how can something like this be fixed?
I tired turning air assist off/on but didnt notice any difference. Using LS1630 CO2, 25% power and 350 in/m, .065 interval (all stock laserbooss settings)
I think in metric for these things, so:
Perhaps the speed and distance units are wrong; they make more sense as millimeters and seconds. I’d say 350 mm/s speed is close to what you want, but a 0.065 mm interval is much too small. The power seems very high.
First, run a Material Test with an interval around 0.2 mm to get an idea of the correct speed & power:
Then run an Interval Test to find the proper line spacing:
Using assist air may or may not help, so that’s another thing to test after you get the speed / power / interval settings settled. The beam is vaporizing plastic and it’s gotta go somewhere, so you must minimize the depth of the engraving to reduce the debris field on the surface.
I’ve had this issue, and increased the ventilation across the material to move the debris out of the way before it has time to cool down. The debris of acrylic is vapor and it will condense as soon as it can… usually on your work piece.
I run the absolute minimum air assist, just enough to keep the lens clear. Air assist can cause strange things with acrylic.
I assume this is some type of acrylic, it’s nice to know what material you’re using and how much power you have… 25% of something unknown is not much to go on.
Use painters tape to mask your burns… simply burn right through it, then peel
thank you for the info, yes you are correct its 350mm/s and 25% power, machine is 70W laserboss. In the manual for the machine it mentions using these settings for power, speed, and interval setting. Including the .065mm setting as remonned by laserboss for their machine (ls-16390)
just to make sure i understand i should run the interval tests and material tests and look for which square gives me no ghosting of letters?
so apply blue tape across the face then laser, then remove tape? keep power and speed settings the same and same with air assist?
That’s a good starting point yes. That material that you remove has to go somewhere, and without excellent dust/fume extraction, it will end up on the part itself, so masking helps!
The point of those tests identifying where in the universe of possible values the best results occur, with “best” defined by what you want to see.
The manufacturer’s recommended settings tend to be, shall we say, optimistic, so discovering what produces your level of quality on your machine with your materials is critical.
