cutting speed

[julien.b]

Hi Guys !

I am a French engineer,

I will build a lasersaur but a tube 100w and too big for me,

I want to cut the white paper thickness 0.4mm

And wood thickness max 2mm

I would use a 40w tube

Have you got an idea of the cutting speed?

I am also studying a suction and air filtration system, you'd share my results in a few months ...

you'd share my drawing in few months, after my first test

 I'm sorry for my bad english  :-(

Thank you

[Kevin Verelst]

Hi Julien,

Welcome to the group! Bienvenue!

Regarding the cutting speed, for paper the max speed you'll be able to reach will depend on the quality you're after.

At the moment the lasersaur still has some resonance issues if you're going faster then 2000mm/min. We're usually working at around 1200mm/min for reasonable, not too wobbly, results.

For wood, we're cutting 3mm plywood at S135 (which should be about 50w) at 1200mm/min, so my guess would be you'll be able to get speeds between 1200-1400mm/min at full power with your 40w tube.

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask and if you can't figure it out in english (even though it's not that bad), mon francais n'est pas trop mal ;)

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[Steve Baker]

We cut 3mm plywood with a 100W laser and it cuts reliably at 1800mm/min.

With a 40W laser, it's going to be much slower - and may possibly require
multiple passes. I've cut 3mm plywood with a 60 watt laser - that worked
OK, when everything was working perfectly but had to be run fairly slowly.

The biggest issue with very low powered machines is that you have to be
much more attentive to keeping the focus just right and the lenses and
mirrors perfectly clean.

We do etching of wood with our laser running at 40% power and at
1000mm/min and the wood is only just lightly scorched...so you'll
definitely be going slower than that.

Another thing to note is that the laser loses power the further you are
working from the top-left corner - in part because the smoke and water in
the air attenuates the laser - and in part because the focus of the laser
is likely to be a little worse out there. I notice a much larger spot
size in the bottom-right than in the top-left.

Building a 40W laser with a 2'x4' base is probably pointless. Commercial
40W devices typically have much smaller bed sized.

When you don't have the power, one technique is to do the cutting in
multiple passes, cutting deeper and deeper with each pass. However, that
only works well for wood if you can refocus the laser deeper into the
material after each pass...that's a major pain to do on a machine like the
lasersaur that doesn't have a Z table.

Another issue is the kind of wood you're thinking about. Heavy, resinous
wood is much harder to cut - lighter, drier woods are easier. Composite
woods like MDF are held together with epoxy, and that's harder to cut too.
Plywood is easier, but even then, there are knot-holes or cracks in the
inner layer(s) of the wood that fill up with glue when the plywood is
manufactured. Even our 100W laser fails to cut through those!

-- Steve


Paper should cut very nicely though...I can zip through paper at
4000mm/min and 40% power...and I could probably go even faster than that.

I have to disagree with Kevin about the resonance thing though.

Our experiments show that the resonance happens when the Y-drive is
running at about 450 mm/min...that resonant frequency can show up at *any*
cutting speed above 450 mm/min because when you cut at an angle or around
a curve, the X and Y drive motors work together with each moving at a
slower speed that combine to move the head at the speed you specified.

I would strongly recommend using a higher power laser if you can possibly
manage it. Even 60 watts would make a big difference for you.

-- Steve.

>> ** I'm sorry for my bad english :-(**

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-- Steve

[julien bonjour]

Thank you for your answers

with a 40 W laser I want use this product (see the picture) for to cool the laser : (and 2 fan of 120 mm)

there is also a version with 3 fan....but for a 50 or 60W laser I don't know if it sufficient ?

what is your opinion ?

Steve I just need a cutting surface 650mm x 450mm (this is a small lasersaur !! )

and I work with 3d simulation software to study the evacuation of smokes, I hope to share my results after my first test

If with a 40w laser I can cutting 2 mm of wood at 1200 mm/min It's perfect for me

Thank you 

Julien

2013/4/29 Steve Baker <st...@sjbaker.org>

[Steve Baker]

I would be quite surprised if you get anywhere near 1200mm/min. As I
said, with our 100W laser, running at 40% power and 1000mm/min, we get a
nice etch - but no deep cutting. I'm not sure how linear the power rating
is - and at the 40% setting, we're really switching all hundred watts on
and off with a 40/60 ratio...that might be very different from a constant
40 watts.

But as I said, a lot depends on the precise kind of wood - and a bunch of
other variables. For example, it's hard to get wood to stay perfectly
flat - so the laser is unlikely to be in perfect focus everywhere...with
enough power to spare, that's not a serious problem - but if you're
already only just making it - then a couple of millimeters of defocus
could be enough to make it fail to cut through. Whether that matters or
not depends entirely on how flat your material is to start with.

-- Steve

[douglas repetto]

With my 60w Chinese laser I can cut some kinds of 6mm plywood very
cleanly at about 10% speed and 100% power. I don't know what that
translates into as mm/min on a Lasersaur. The plywood that cuts easily
has one big ply in the middle and two thin plys on the outsides. Denser
plywood, with lots of small plys (and so lots more glue), does not cut
well at all on the 60w. I haven't found super precise focusing to be an
issue.

Julien, can you make it a 60w laser instead of 40w? At 60w I'm pretty
sure you'll have no problem cutting 2mm wood at a nice speed.


best,
douglas

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[julien bonjour]

Hello Kevin, Steve, Douglas and the other builder

Thank you all for answers,

The length of the 60w laser is 1200mm it's too long for my office  !

The max is a 50w laser (1000mm) Coltech buy this tube with his power supplies at 300$ +110$/shipping

And with a 40 or 50 W laser I hope colling the laser with this produits (see my last email)

But 50w laser tube isn't a standard, it will not be easy to change in the future if the tube breaks

what is your opinion ?

I would like  mainly cutting the white paper of 0.4mm (80% of my use) 

Thank you

Julien

2013/4/29 douglas repetto <dou...@music.columbia.edu>

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[Steve Baker]

If *all* you want to do is to cut paper - then even a 10 watt laser will
do the job. I've seen people cutting paper with a laser diode scavenged
from a broken blu-ray player:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEUGbagf5-4
http://www.ehow.com/how_5969527_build-own-cutting-laser.html

Here is one that uses the laser from a DVD/CD-ROM drive:

http://www.ehow.com/how_5714580_make-cutting-laser-cd-rom.html

Those laser diodes have built-in focussing optics and everything else you
need!

The problem is that step up in power you need to cut wood is huge...not
only that but you have to use an infra-red laser - so you have add in all
of those hideously expensive gold coated mirrors and lenses that seem to
be made of unobtainium! When using that much laser power, you need to
enclose the whole machine for safety reasons, you need air assist,
ventilation fans and a water cooling system.

If all you need is to cut paper - then a blu-ray laser has plenty of
power, it's light enough and small enough to put right into the cutting
head - no cooling, no ventilation, no enclosure (although you might still
want to protect your eyes with some goggles)...everything gets a million
times easier, smaller and cheaper!

Actually - the cheapest solution for cutting paper isn't a laser at all -
it's a knife blade in a swivel mount. Check out the "CriCut" - you can
find those (used) for $100. Don't buy a modern one though - you need to
be able to hack it to get a USB connection to your computer and you can't
do that with the latest version of the CriCut.

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/printing_scanners_vinyl_cutting_plotters/70548-cricut_hack.html

...I've heard of people using the CriCut to cut thin (1.5mm) wood veneers
too...so you might want to investigate that a bit more:

http://www.ehow.com/how_12046427_cutting-wood-cricut.html

There is another machine like that called the "craftrobo" which you don't
have to hack - but costs $280:

http://www.graphteccorp.com/craftrobo/

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[julien bonjour]

Hi !

I need to cut the paper, with an "industrial" speed : my wife creates cardboard invitations for wedding, birthday ....

the Blu-ray laser is slow and I think the 10w laser is too slow

I know CNC blade it's a good equipment for a hobby but make hundreds of cuts and small details it is impossible

look the examples :

2013/4/30 Steve Baker <st...@sjbaker.org>

[Steve Baker]

I agree that the cricut approach is no good for you - but from what I've
seen, the blu-ray lasers aren't all that slow...but when considering
"industrial" uses - cost and speed are interrelated.

I see 3D printer technologies have the "3D motion" part of the system down
under $500 now. You only need 2 axes and you don't need all of that
extruder stuff. If the laser diode costs almost nothing and you don't need
water chillers and such - I bet you could build a laser cutter for $400
with a bed large enough to cut those card and paper products. At that
price, it's gotta be ten times cheaper than a 30 watt CO2 laser cutter -
and they aren't ten times slower.

Well, it's just a thought.

-- Steve

julien bonjour wrote:
> Hi !
>
> I need to cut the paper, with an "industrial" speed : my wife creates
> cardboard invitations for wedding, birthday ....
> the Blu-ray laser is slow and I think the 10w laser is too slow
>
> I know CNC blade it's a good equipment for a hobby but make hundreds of
> cuts and small details it is impossible
>
> look the examples :
>
>
>
>
>

[medu...@gmail.com]

But if just cutting paper, why not just buy a cheap china 40w-laser,
they will propably do the job just fine for sub-1000$ including shipping?

// Erik

[Steve Baker]

Sub-$1000 *including* shipping?! Where?

They usually come in at around $2,800 with free shipping - the ones that
sometimes pop up on eBay for amounts less than that seem to always have
shipping costs that by an amazing coincidence add up to $2,800.

Where are you seeing them?

-- Steve

[Jonathan Buford]

Where do you think the guys on eBay get their machines:

http://s.taobao.com/search?q=%BC%A4%B9%E2%C7%D0%B8%EE%99C&keyword=&commend=all&ssid=s5-e&search_type=item&atype=&tracelog=&sourceId=tb.index&rt=1367419061220&source=haiwaigou&pid=mm_14507416_2297358_8935934&unid=

[Kyle Wong]

Yeap, sad to say that it's much cheaper on this side of the planet. Some of them even come with automated lifting platform ...

Steve, is there another type of laser tube besides glass? I recently go to a local fair and one of the owner of a laser machine claim that they are using metal Laser Tube instead of Glass which can last longer life span, is this true?

2013/5/1 Jonathan Buford <jon.b...@gmail.com>

[Kyle Wong]

An off-the-shelf machine with 400x600mm cutting size with 40W laser tube cost around $550 bucks here, so with shipping to the States, probably below $1,000. Not sure about the quality yet, but the samples they show are pretty promising.

2013/5/1 Jonathan Buford <jon.b...@gmail.com>

[Jonathan Buford]

Usually, you might want to toss the controller and fit your own, but the other bits are usable.

[Steve Baker]

Yes, some of the very expensive laser cutters (like the ULS one I used)
use a different form of laser stimulation - using radio waves or
something. The lasers are indeed encased in metal rather than glass (or
maybe as well as glass - I'm not sure).

Those lasers are claimed to have much longer lifespans, and they can be
air-cooled, so no messing around with water chillers.

The problem (as I understand it) is that they're horribly expensive. But
since my lasersaur is now pushing 3,000 hours - and our Kickstarter broke
$45,000 (and will therefore require it to put another 4,000 hours on it
this year) - I might be one of the people who'd be interested in such
things.

-- Steve

[Steve Baker]

Yeah - I'd heard that the software was pretty flakey too...but it wouldn't
take much to drop an Arduino and a LasaurShield into one of them.

It's a bit surprising that they don't do that themselves...then they could
ship the machine with a copy of Inkscape - get rid of all of their bugs
and not have any software maintenance work to do in the future.

-- Steve

[medu...@gmail.com]

Steve, for example here:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/160932185988

Just go to eBay and search for "40w laser" and you'll find them :)

// Erik