Can anyone point me to a decent speed vs. power chart for your typical K40? I don’t even know what the recommended speed range is for the K40. I know you’re not supposed to drive your tube past 80% power unless you want to shorten it’s life, but that’s about it.
While we’re on the subject, has anyone found a good 40W CO2 materials chart that gives light and dark engraving, and cutting numbers by material type and thickness?
Examples:
MDF 3mm – Engrave Light: XX% Power / XXmm/min speed
From my experience, other people’s settings don’t always play nice with MY machine. It will be the same for you. But, they can be a vague guideline at least of where to start testing.
Personally though, for every new material I use I take a scrap & perform a series of calibration tests. Run some basic cuts (a 10mm square for example) at various different speeds/power levels to determine which is best/cleanest.
Run a calibration gradient BMP through the raster to test variations in the PWM power level & how it affects your specific material.
Oh understood. It’s like anything else… cooking, for example. Everyone has different ovens, and they live in different altitudes, so recipes are guidelines. Such a chart would have to be too. But it would be nice to have someplace to close-ish to start from, and then you can just dial it in through a few brief rounds of testing instead of having to guess every time you use some new material or thickness.
@TwelveFoot I raster engrave around 300mm/s regardless of material, and just adjust power depending on how deep I want to go. Never had any issue with losing steps. Just make sure you don’t command your laser to go beyond the physical limits of the machine - it will do WHATEVER you tell it to do with the stock firmware & hardware! Run a preview first with the beam off so if it crashes it’s only at low speed.
I straight-line vector cut at anywhere between 7-15mm/s, though I’m still tinkering with this. I’ve gone higher, but I generally run out of power to do meaningful cuts above 15mm/s on all but the thinnest materials. 12mm/s SEEMS to be a nice all-around speed, but like I said, still tinkering.
I have experienced issues attempting to do detailed vector cuts above 8mm/s - usually tends to lose steps in both axes. I have to go slow and low power to get anything other than long straight lines and smooth curves.