Okay, so I got the K40 last week, aligned and polished mirrors, last night did the same with the lens.
I just took the bed out, trim the duct and insert some mesh with steel rulers as a 0 position. However, I did some test cuts last night with some .2" plywood. After 4 passes at various power settings, it did not go through. I thought perhaps it was too thick, so I went to 3mm plywood…same result.
Help!
power and speed and focus - what were your settings?
I tried all power and speed, anything from 5 to 10, at 30mm/s all the way up to 400mm/s at full power. I think part of it is focal, which I am going to work towards upgrading the bed.
Try 8 ma at 10mm/sec - are you using the air assist head? If so, make sure the beam is not hitting the sides of the nozzle
Focus is likely the issue. You need to have the material 50.8mm from the lens. Or if you want to tune it precisely, 50.8mm less 1/2 the thickness of your material. That will put the narrowest portion of the beam in the middle of your material and equalize the cut throughout. But for general purposes for 3 or 6mm plywood you can just measure from the surface to the lens.
Make sure the measurement is to the lens and not to the lens holder body, nozzle or something else. If you’ve got a stock lens holder that’s probably the bottom of the lens holder but if you’ve got an air assist it’s actually somewhere in the lens tube.
@J.R_Sharp follow this guide if you haven’t yet. https://plus.google.com/+ArielYahni/posts/ho5JAUMgTmE
Also note, you may have put your lens in upside down or even it was shipped upside down (like mine was). The convex side goes up.
Hey buddy. Have you checked your alignment since refitting the bed? I took mine out to trim the air extract and then when I put it back, it was way out of alignment. All other ideas will cause issues to, but I’ve not seen mention of you checking the laser alignment to all 3 mirror since refitting the bed so thought I’d mention it
I’m doing all of this as we speak. I did learn that my tube was about 1/4" out of level with the chassis, now that I’ve tuned that, I have to redo all of the mirrors now. Gonna be a long night.
Maybe longer
Ah - but the morning will dawn with new understanding and new horizons to conquer, the journey cannot begin until the ship is ready to sail.
Alignment is done and I made an adjustable bed. 3 passes on 3mm Baltic at 15mm/s and 10mw will now cut through. No hope yet on the .2 in stuff.
Did you check your lens? Bump side up?
It’s a very small bump, but yes.
And you’re sure you’re 50.8mm from the bottom of the lens to the top of the material?
Bump the power to 15ma and drop the speed to 10mm/s.
Full safe power on these is 18ma so you don’t shorten the life of the tube.
I have just fixed my focal point on my machine & can cut 3mm plywood in 3 passes @ 6mA @ 20mm/s with a very thin cut line.
Sounds like your closing in on success !