I am starting to get into engraving with my smoothiefied k40. My K40 is one of the newer ones with the digital power setting which is displayed in percentage. Most people on here talk about their power settings in milliamps. I noticed last night when I engrave that a thing above 25 percent kind of burns the wood. I do have air assist going. I am guessing when I see people engraving on here at 6 or 7ma that it would be like 10 to 20 percent for me. What’s a good speed to start out at? 30mm/s or so? I’m just trying to get a good starting point.
Every unit and every power supply/tube is different in some way. You will have to experiment at different power levels.
I was just wondering if around 15 percent was normal and nothing was wrong with my set up
Here’s a decent idea of what a percent power to mA conversion would look like. Most engraving speeds I use fall between 200-500mm/s and between 25-50% power. Set up some small test engraves and experiment with changing speed vs power. Do the same for cutting. I do this each time I use a different material and mark each test with the info and keep for reference.
Im not sure if this can help but I always do a test cut of all the materials that goes thru my laser. So i know my settings everytime i deal with that material. I call it “material test cut”. Not sure if you can use this, but will share anyway for others to use maybe.
For Vector Test:
DWG File
DXF File
SVG File
For Raster:
Well i dont have raster capability, but i think this will do the same since you just need to know which power band is the most useful to your material.
DWG File
DXF File
SVG File
Hope this helps.
I will find those useful, thanks for sharing @Cesar_Tolentino
In my lasersaur board I can do lasing by color. So I do from the lowest speed first so that will be on the right side of squares first. I am looking at the fastest with lowest number of cut with the least burn damage I can live with.
So in the pic above on the most right … My 600 is the same with my 400. So I use 600mm/min