Does anyone use a Universal Laser Systems VLS6.60 laser cutter?

[Phil Macoun]

Hi everyone,

I have been a quiet lurker in this forum for a while and learn a lot from the posts. Many thanks.

I have recently taken a post as a design tech teacher in Malaysia and we have a brand new 60w ULS laser cutter that we are trying to figure out (VLS6.60). Our dilemma is that we can't find the cut settings for our laser cutter (we can find them for the 50w model) and don't have time to be figuring them out for each material and thickness via trial and error. The internet hasn't been able to help either. So I thought I would try this forum.

Do any of you have experience with this particular laser cutter? Are you able to provide the cut settings?

Many thanks in advance.

Phil

[Andrew]

Even if there's some general guidelines, every laser cutter has to be tuned for particular material by trial and error.

There is a way to make this easier. Take the time to make one document that has a grid small squares (I normally use 1-2cm) laid out across the whole width of the cutting bed. Start at one corner with minimum power (I normally start at 30%) and maxiumum speed. Adjust one paramater along each axis, so that the opposite corner will be the high power, low speed cut. Then stick a small text box above each square in a consistent power/speed combo that records which settings were used on the square below.

Depending on your design/layout software, that sheet might take an hour to build. But then you can take any new material, run the sheet on it as is, and get a sense of what settings will produce what effect.  If you're not normally using full-bed sheets, then you can make a few smaller sheets tuned to light/med/heavy cut settings.

--andrew

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[Clint Johns]

I am super new to laser cutting (still in my 1st week) - is there a way to set a job to have variable speed and power levels, or do you have to manually jog and change the settings each iteration?

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[Andrew]

It's possible, but how it's implemented depends on your software.  Many cutting tools use color as a marker for speed/power. So you can have green be a vector at 80p/50s, red as a vector 30p/30s, and purple as a raster 50p,50s.

Some software tools can use other document properties - stroke/fill type, layer, etc - in similar ways. 

--andrew

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