The Lightblade Learning Lab with Russ Sadler
The Lightblade Learning Lab is a series of videos that Russ did for Thinklaser Limited based on using the Lightblade 4060 Laser Cutting and Engraving Machine. Thinklasers Lightblade 4060 has a 400 x 600mm bed size and was supplied with a 60W EFR laser tube. In this session, Russ explains all about Laser Cutting Parameter Optimization and the key variables that effect the cut performance. He also explains why cut parameters are not transferrable across machines.

Contents
- Cutting parameters are subject to many variables.
- The things that affect the cutting parameters:
- Material
- Thickness
- Power available for cutting
- Cutting speed
- Focal distance of the lens
- Position of focal point with respect to the material
- Air assist
- Limitations of ‘Cutting parameter Table of Laser Machine’ which (to date) is supplied with Thinklaser machines. Care with PVC!
- Suggested better table is Thunderlaser cutting parameters available here. Russ uses the 60W one here. Take care with plastics.
- Value of practical experience as opposed to relying on parameter tables.
- Important notes to be added to your parameter chart.
- Example of cutting card three different ways, first on a steel bed…
- Importance of keeping the material flat.
- ‘Noisy’ engraving/low power cutting and quieter cutting at a higher power.
- Having to clean off the residue left on the steel bed with white vinegar (Dri-Pak product here).
- Setting up the table to get the best airflow across the card and testing it.
- Altering air assist rate to reduce flaming.
- Checking the results – much cleaner so a note should be made of this in the parameter table.
- Airflow considerations with the honeycomb bed.
- Performing a test with the honeycomb bed – a messy result.
- Using stand-offs with the honeycomb bed.
My thanks go out to Tom at Thinklaser for giving permission to embed these videos on this site. If you are looking for a new laser machine from a quality supplier, then I would suggest you check out their website: www.thinklaser.com.
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Transcript For Laser Cutting Parameter Optimization – Fact or Fiction
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00:15
Welcome to another Lightblade Learning Lab. Today we’re going to tackle a
00:20
subject which has come up just recently when Thinklaser reported back to me on
00:28
my early videos, asking me, why am I so vague on setting up the parameters for
00:36
cutting. Especially as they have provided me with a data sheet which gives me all the
00:41
cutting parameters for a 60-watt tube. In fact, for all sorts of tubes. Now cutting
00:48
parameters in my opinion is a very inexact science at this moment in time
00:54
because there are so many parameters that affect cutting and any cutting
01:01
parameter chart that you see, only contains the merest hint of all the
01:06
parameters that could vary and affect your cut. Now “Oi mate, can you tell me the way to China?” “oh, that way.”
01:12
I think that’s a fairly good example of what
01:19
cutting parameters are. They’re just a pointer in the right direction. Let me
01:23
just show you for example, some of the things that can affect it. The first and
01:27
obvious thing that’s going to affect your choice of cutting parameters is the
01:30
material itself and then you’ve got the material thickness and then we’ve got
01:36
this one here which I’ve called power available for cutting. We’ve touched on
01:41
some of this stuff before when we talked about mirrors, when we talked about
01:46
lenses. The power coming out of the laser may well be 60 watts, but it’s got to pass
01:52
through three mirrors which, lets conservatively say they lose three
01:58
percent each and then it’s got to pass through a lens which might be another
Transcript For Laser Cutting Parameter Optimization – Fact or Fiction (Cont…)
02:04
three percent. So that 7.2 watts that we’ve lost out of our 60 before we start. So we’re
02:10
down to 53 watts. So we may well have started off with 60 watts but we’re
02:16
going to finish up with 53 watts. Now that’s what I’m talking about power
02:21
available and you won’t see anybody talking about power available on any
02:27
cutting parameter charts. They will talk about what your tube delivers, supposedly.
02:34
Not how your machine is set up. So if your mirrors start to get a bit dirty or
02:39
your lens gets fogged up, this number here can drop considerably and it can
02:44
affect substantially the performance of your cut. Now the next thing that affects
02:49
the cut is obviously the cutting speed which you have got control over. When you
02:54
look at the Thunder laser website they do mention different types of lens but
02:58
only one of them is specified as a focal length. The other thing that
03:04
can affect the cutting is, and I’m talking specifically about cutting now
03:08
and not engraving, is the position of the focal point. Now you can have the focal
03:15
point set on the surface of the material or you can drop the focal point so that
03:19
it’s actually inside the material itself and that has a significant effect on the
03:24
cutting performance and the final thing depending on whether you’re cutting
03:29
acrylic or whether you’re cutting some organic material like leather or wood or
03:35
MDF. Air assist is a very important factor which nobody ever seems to
03:41
mention much about. When we see a chart which tells us that for a given material
03:46
and a given thickness all we need to do is use sixty percent power and a speed
03:52
of X that’s only half the story and that’s really what I’m talking about .
03:59
Now to establish cutting parameters for your machine. Only your machine will have
Transcript For Laser Cutting Parameter Optimization – Fact or Fiction (Cont…)
04:07
all this set of parameters. This is the most important thing on your machine,
04:12
which is the power that you’re delivering because that’s under your
04:16
control. I suppose theoretically any supplier of cutting parameters cannot
04:24
legislate for the quality of your machine.
04:28
So consequently they give you best conditions, but we don’t know the
04:34
condition of their machine when they set it up. Maybe their machine was similar,
04:39
maybe it wasn’t? We just don’t know, so the whole thing about cutting parameters
04:45
is uncertainty and so what I’m going to do is to show you how you can generate
04:52
your own cutting parameters and populate RDWorks with information that is
04:57
pertinent to you and your machine. Now ideally you would like to know what
05:07
power your machine is delivering. Not what power percentage. Percentage is one
05:16
of the worst things I can ever imagine for power but there is no other way of
05:21
defining power unless you have a power meter and you generally keep using the
05:27
power meter as I do to check the power of the machine but that’s because I’m
05:32
purely using this machine to understand and expand my knowledge about this
05:38
technology. The title of this section is cutting parameters fact or fiction. I’m
05:45
sorry I’m going to be a bit hesitant there is a small amount of fact in this
05:51
table if you can find it, but there’s a lot of fiction. Let me point out why i
05:56
don’t use these tables and i use my experience instead. We’ve got a whole
Transcript For Laser Cutting Parameter Optimization – Fact or Fiction (Cont…)
06:00
range of laser tubes here, the one that i’ve got is a 60 watt tube so let’s just
06:05
focus on the 60 watt. First of all up in the top right hand corner we can clearly
06:10
see that it says use 95% laser power. Well I think we’ve already established
06:17
that ninety-five percent laser power is a killer, it’s not going to do your tube
06:23
any good at all. On my machine at sixty-seven percent power I shall be
06:27
over driving the tube and seriously shortening its life. That immediately
06:31
brings into question the validity of all these figures because if they were done
06:37
at ninety-five percent power in the factory on a machine which on the
06:41
particular day produce those numbers that’s fine, that’s fact. But they’re not
06:48
fact for your machine or my machine. Cutting parameters are a hugely complex
06:54
subject which I tried to stay away from up to now and there is no way that I can
06:59
begin to tackle cutting parameters in one session. If I was using a machine all
07:04
day every day for production. I would, I would focus in on just a few cutting
07:10
parameters that suited me and my machine and my production. I don’t have that
07:16
luxury, I’m an inveterate fiddler I like to understand how things work and as
07:23
such when I look at these tables they are practically meaningless. I keep using
07:31
disparaging terms about these tables and now I think I really ought to justify
07:35
myself by pointing out some of the reasons why I’m being so disparaging.
07:41
Let’s just take this first section here acrylic, I understand acrylic quite well
07:45
because I’ve done a lot of acrylic work. First of all this table is being in the
07:53
process, hopefully by the time you get your machine, this table will have been
07:58
completely revised and a bit more sense put into it, because I’ve already pointed
Transcript For Laser Cutting Parameter Optimization – Fact or Fiction (Cont…)
08:03
out a lot of problems to Thinklaser. First of all when we look down the
08:08
thicknesses there three millimeters three millimeters hang on shouldn’t that
08:15
be five millimetres or six millimetres or maybe four millimetres but it’s
08:21
certainly not three millimetres. We’ve already pointed out the ninety-five
08:24
percent laser power problem ok let’s look across the top column and let’s
08:28
just focus in on my particular 60 watt tube. We’ve got two columns there, two
08:35
speeds to choose from we’ve got highest speed and a best speed now what does
08:41
that actually mean? As an absolute novice you would come into that and think well
08:47
I can cut that at 20 millimetres a second if I’ve got a 60 watt tube. I wonder
08:53
what the best speed is? Why would I go slower?
08:55
Is it something to do with the surface finish? With acrylic there are two speeds
09:01
that you can cut at, one of them is high speed and you could put high speed with
09:07
a lot of air or you can go slower and you can get a better surface finish with
09:12
using less air. Let’s have a quick look at the notes and sure enough when we
09:19
look over at the notes it says please pay attention to the airflow. OK it’s a little
09:25
bit of Chinglish there, but basically what it’s saying is that if you run with
09:30
low airflow you get a better finish. So there’s a sort of erm, sort of logic
09:38
when you understand how to cut acrylic but as a novice it wouldn’t make any
09:45
sense at all. The machine is supplied with three lenses, a two inch, a two and
09:50
a half and a four-inch lens. I’ve added to that collection with a one and a half
09:55
inch lens of my own manufacture. What do these figures apply to, because they
Transcript For Laser Cutting Parameter Optimization – Fact or Fiction (Cont…)
10:01
don’t apply equally to every lens? Because the density of the power of each
10:08
lens and its ability to cut changes. So there’s one major piece of information
10:15
missing from this table and that’s the lens that they used to produce this data.
10:20
When you’re cutting thicker materials the lens narrows the beam down to
10:26
something called a focus point if you are engraving you need the focus point
10:31
set to the surface. If you are cutting different thicknesses of material you
10:38
need the focal point set to different depths in the material to get the most
10:44
efficient cut. I’m still trying to find out what Kinef is or kinEF? Should that
10:52
be Knife? Just a bad spelling? As far as I can find out Kinef is a Russian
10:58
oil plant! Umm I’ve got no clue what that means. Now when it comes to MDF and HDF
11:08
with my 60 watt tube they tell me I can run at 15 or 12 millimeters a second. Now
11:15
from personal experience I would never want to run at slower than the fastest
11:22
speed that I could possibly get out of the machine. You put the power up to its
11:26
maximum, you put the air flow, as I mentioned at the end here up to its
11:31
maximum and you see just how fast you can run. The faster you can run for the
11:38
maximum power, the least amount of charring you get on the edge. So why
11:43
would you want to run at slow speed? It’s a puzzle to me? Now this relationship
11:51
between speed and airflow is a subject that we will tackle in a future session.
11:58
It’s a very important subject and it has significant effects when it comes to
Transcript For Laser Cutting Parameter Optimization – Fact or Fiction (Cont…)
12:03
cutting and now we come on to something which is very very controversial. They
12:11
tell me that I can cut PVC in this table and they give me the parameters for
12:16
doing it. Yes, I can cut PVC, but no I would never cut PVC and i would advise you to
12:23
never cut PVC, because in cutting PVC the chemical reaction caused by heating PVC,
12:32
releases chlorine gas and also hydrogen chloride gas. When it comes into contact
12:39
with moisture it will turn into hydrochloric acid I don’t think I want
12:44
to cover my eyes or my lungs with hydrochloric acid thank you very much
12:48
indeed! And by the way it will have no good effects on the slide ways and the
12:56
electronics in your machine. Well I think that’s enough critical comment about
13:02
that table and one of the reasons why I don’t use the table that was supplied
13:06
with the machine. I must reinforce the fact that I said at the beginning Thinklaser
13:13
are no different than any other company, any parameter table that’s
13:20
supplied lacks information and is only a guide.
13:23
The fact that this one possesses some dangerous suggestions had been pointed
13:31
out to Thinklaser and they are in the process of correcting that. So by the
13:34
time you get your machine and look at this table it will probably be
13:38
unrecognisable. To justify what I’m saying about all cutting parameter
13:47
tables, I’m going to take you to one of what I consider to be one of the
13:52
slightly better researched sets of data out there and that’s on a site called
Transcript For Laser Cutting Parameter Optimization – Fact or Fiction (Cont…)
14:00
Thunder Laser now they provide you with set of parameters for these different
14:08
wattage tubes they haven’t tried to put them all on to one table they’ve kept
14:13
them on separate tables. So we take a look at the parameter table for my
14:18
particular 60 watt laser. Now these tables are slightly better than the
14:24
other set of data that we looked at, because first of all they tell me that
14:29
this is a standard later head and so this data applies to a 2-inch lens and
14:36
again we’ve got just one speed, maximum power and it says powering corners. Well,
14:45
I think as far as the setup is concerned that’s max power and min power. We
14:54
haven’t tackled this subject of Max and min power for cutting this is yet
14:58
another complex subject which which will deal with in a future session, but at
15:02
least there’s an attempt here to show you that there are two possible powers
15:07
that you can use. So this table is slightly more informative. Again we’ve
15:12
got thicknesses and we’ve got just one speed now and we’ve only got one speed
15:17
for acrylic. There is a catch-all at the top here which covers them to a certain
15:21
extent which basically says suggested parameters for some materials. They’re
15:24
not saying these are absolute parameters, suggested parameters and it says
15:30
again the parameters might be different according to different machines.
15:34
Now the other thing that you notice about this table is they do mention foam
15:41
in here, which depends on what sort of material plastic you’re talking about, it
15:48
could be producing toxic chemicals. Research it very carefully before you do
15:54
it. I have pointed out in the hazards of materials, that you should be very
15:58
careful with plastics and when we get down here they do mention plastics. Oops
Transcript For Laser Cutting Parameter Optimization – Fact or Fiction (Cont…)
16:07
we don’t suggest you do them. So with a two inch lens they’re only giving you
16:13
information regarding 2.3 millimeter thickness and 2.7 millimeter thickness
16:19
and five millimeter thickness. So they’re not really giving you too much
16:23
information here, these are very much more of an outline guide. They also
16:31
mention cutting with a four inch focal length lens but they don’t mention
16:37
cutting with what they call their high resolution laser head. Now the high
16:44
resolution laser head, I think, but I’m not absolutely certain. I think that
16:50
basically is a one and a half inch lens. Well here we are back at the machine I
16:56
promise I’ve finished my rant about the dubious nature of the existing cutting
17:02
parameter charts that are available, not just from Thinklaser, but basically
17:06
wherever you go they all suffer with the same problem. Too little
17:11
information to be of any serious relevance to you, to repeatably set up
17:16
your machine. I suppose in a strange sort of way I’d feel a bit like my mum used
17:24
to, I alwaysremember my mum being able to just go to the cupboard take out all the
17:29
ingredients for a cake throw them into a bowl and a cake magically appeared and
17:34
it was perfect every time. Now I don’t look at a recipe book, I don’t look at
17:39
cutting parameters. Within two years i have gained a great deal of, I don’t know how to word it.
17:46
Perhaps the word, “feel” is the right word to use. I understand how various
17:51
lenses affect the cutting, I understand how airflow affects the cutting. I
17:57
understand how speed affects the cutting and power affects the cutting and I mix
Transcript For Laser Cutting Parameter Optimization – Fact or Fiction (Cont…)
18:03
all these ingredients together in my head when I’ve got a problem, and I come
18:08
up with nearly the right solution most of the time. Now, as a novice you don’t have
18:14
that skill or that ability and I don’t know whether it’s something that’s unique
18:18
to me or whether I’m getting plain bloody lazy because I don’t want
18:21
to go through all the work of filling in cutting parameters that I’m just
18:25
about to demonstrate to you. We’re running out of time in this session to
18:30
actually do any real cutting parameter test work, but I promise you in the
18:35
next session we will spend the whole of the session going through ways in which
18:39
you should or methods to approach setting up cutting parameters and
18:44
filling them int o charts. Now the cutting parameters that I should be telling you
18:49
about will be complete they would be just like a Jamie Oliver recipe. You will
18:54
be able to follow them and provided your machine is the same as it was today when
18:59
you left it yesterday they will work and if it doesn’t work it means that
19:04
there’s something wrong with your machine and that’s the great thing about
19:07
having exact cutting parameters it keeps an eye on the health of your machine. No
19:14
today we’re going to finish off this session by looking at some of the rather
19:19
key features that your ought to add to the notes when you’re doing your
19:23
parameters set up. Because there are very important things that you need to
19:29
understand but they’re things that nobody ever mentions in any parameter
19:34
charts that I’ve ever seen. It all comes down to experience, but experience should
19:39
be included in your cutting parameter chart. I’ve put my glasses on to look a bit
19:44
more studious and away we go. Now how many cutting parameter charts have you
19:49
ever seen where they mention anything about the extraction? How many parameter
19:55
charts have you ever seen where they tell you exactly what you should do with your
Transcript For Laser Cutting Parameter Optimization – Fact or Fiction (Cont…)
20:01
air assist? There are some vague references to it in the Thinklaser
20:05
charts, but they are vague references. As a novice you would not understand what
20:12
they mean, as an experienced person i can read into them what I think they mean.
20:18
Right, now what I’ve got here are some of this card that I used for my focus ramps
20:23
and so that I don’t waste my time and effort, I’m going to make some more focus
20:27
ramps. Now I’ve got three sheets here to make three focus ramps in three
20:32
different ways and I’m going to demonstrate some very critical things
20:36
about performance of this machine using that piece of cardboard. I’ve got a two
20:42
inch lens in there. I’ve got a piece of card here, if I was sitting on the
20:46
honeycomb bed with the airflow on there’s a possibility, only a possibility
20:51
that it will sit flat, but bear in mind what we’ve just done
20:56
with focus. It’s quite important that you try and make sure that any job that you
21:01
put on here is flat. Now as you can see this cardboard is not flat and I can
21:07
turn it over and the ends are sticking up in the air well to be honest it’s
21:14
much easier to put the sticky up ends downwards and pull the middle down. We can
21:20
either put little teeny weenie pieces of metal along the edge here so now we’ve
21:26
got a flat piece of material. Key issue number one. The first thing I’m going to
21:30
do is to raise up the table to almost its highest extent so that it’s more or
21:34
less level with the top here.
21:39
And there’s a good reason for doing that which I’ll explain to you shortly. So I’m
21:45
going to set that to five millimetres so what I shall do, I will drop that down
21:53
on to the five millimetre step and lock it up. To make sure that my air supply, and I’m
Transcript For Laser Cutting Parameter Optimization – Fact or Fiction (Cont…)
22:02
going to take this off of it so you can hear it.
22:07
It’s running completely flat out, it’s off and it’s fully on. So I’ve got full air
22:16
assist and the only reason I’m doing that is because you can’t really hear it
22:20
under there. I’m going to turn the extraction system on now.
22:28
So we’ve got plenty of airflow passing through here,
22:34
it’s not as good as it could be because we’ve blocked off a lot of the flow
22:40
because of this table here but what I want to do is demonstrate to you one or
22:47
two things. First of all we still got good airflow through here and we’ve got
22:51
our air assist on here.
22:56
I’ve just, I can hear something, I’m sorry I’m going to stop that.
23:03
I’ve got the power set to fifteen percent for that engraving and I’m going
23:09
to turn the air off.
23:15
Can you hear how noisy the cut is? Hear it?Now I’m gonna stop that. Because I’ve got the
23:32
power set to fifteen percent. Now a completely different subject which I
23:37
will have to tackle at some future point in time is high frequency impact
23:42
engraving. It’s a very strange characteristic and a very useful
23:46
characteristic that you get with a laser tube of good quality. You will hopefully
23:51
see how clean the engraving is, there’s not much smoke damage on there. It is,
Transcript For Laser Cutting Parameter Optimization – Fact or Fiction (Cont…)
24:00
even though I’ve got the air assist on, I’ve got basically quite clean engraving,
24:05
that’s because I’ve got this noisy type of Engraving. Now I’m going to change the
24:13
power from fifteen percent to sixteen percent. In fact I’ll go to seventeen
24:18
percent to be sure that I’m clear of this zone.
24:23
Okay, now for the for the moment i’m going to leave the air off so that we
24:28
can hear the difference between this, I’m calling it engraving but it’s not, it’s
24:34
cutting at very low power so that it doesn’t actually cut through. It’s not
24:39
proper engraving.
24:53
See how quiet it is? Lets turn some extraction on now.
25:14
Now you’ll notice I’m cutting this straight down onto a piece of steel and it
25:20
is giving a slightly hissy effect which is not the laser beam itself but it’s I
25:25
think a reflection off the steel underneath.
25:33
There is a bit of um misting on that surface there, these, these lines look as
25:40
though they’re a little bit brown on either side but that’s where the smoke
25:43
has actually blown back onto the surface of the lines and made them just like
25:50
shadowy. But that’s not the only problem that we’ve got with this
25:54
approach.
25:59
We have two problems; number one we’ve blown out a huge amount
Transcript For Laser Cutting Parameter Optimization – Fact or Fiction (Cont…)
26:04
of tar, in other words the cellulose when it’s cut produces this tar like residue,
26:11
because it’s a wood it’s a resin in there and it’s all sticky on the table now
26:19
that’s a major disadvantage in one way but hey if it wasn’t on the table it
26:25
would be in the filter. That’s what’s not on the back of the product, so this
26:30
really is not a very satisfactory approach for cutting things. As I said, the
26:34
only good thing about it is, that with a little drop of this
26:53
it’s on there not in the filter but it’s not until you see something like that
26:57
you realise just how much stuff is going out into the filter.
27:04
It’s even worse with MDF, ten times worse with MDF and you also get a similar
27:10
sort of residue but it’s a white sticky clear residue or a coloured
27:14
residue when you cut acrylic, Acrylic produces straight um methyl acrylate
27:22
solution, which is a horrible white sticky
27:26
material or if it’s a coloured acrylate it’s a, it’s a coloured material. But now I
27:32
want to try and solve two problems at once. If we take a look at these you’ll
27:38
notice that they’ve got a sort of a bit of a shadow dusky hue to them. With
27:45
your air assist you’re actually blowing the smoke back and painting that smoke
27:51
debris back onto the surface, so the last thing you really want to do is to have
27:58
your air assist on. First of all if we turn the air assist off, which I
Transcript For Laser Cutting Parameter Optimization – Fact or Fiction (Cont…)
28:03
have done now, the problem is that we’re likely to smoke the lens. So what we need
28:10
to do is to make sure that we’ve got lots of air flow passing across the job
28:15
so that we don’t stand any chance of doing just that. The way that we’re going
28:20
to achieve that is by dropping the table down a bit the first thing I’ve done to
28:25
stop the rubbish from collecting underneath here so we should finish up
28:30
with clean surface underneath and now what we want we want air flow passing
28:36
underneath a small amount but we want a lot of air flow across the surface
28:43
because the smoke comes up and we don’t want to blow it back down again we want
28:48
to push it away as quickly as possible and the way that we’re going to achieve
28:52
that is by going into the Z-mode and dropping the table down so that the
28:58
table sits approximately level with this surface here. There we go, that has dropped on nicely.
29:11
and now what I’m going to do I’m going to move this as close as I can to the
29:17
front edge of the machine. So here I am within an inch or so of the front of the
29:20
machine.
29:23
On this lid, I have attached some 1/2 inch thick rubber pads, so the door has got a
29:31
half-inch gap underneath it and that will allow a jet of air to fly
29:37
across the top of the job and I’ve made sure that that happens
29:43
because I’ve got this solid piece of metal in here which has blocked off the
29:47
air that would normally pass down through the table. So the only way for
29:53
the air to get through this machine is to get out the back here to those
29:57
grills at the back there and to do that it’ll fly straight across the top of
Transcript For Laser Cutting Parameter Optimization – Fact or Fiction (Cont…)
30:01
this job.
30:04
And there we go we shall have to look through the window this time.
30:09
Unusual for me to run the machine with the cover down but in this particular
30:13
instance is essential. So I’ve turned the air assist off, I’ve set the focus
30:19
correct and we’ve got plenty of air flow zipping through this gap underneath the door.
30:29
Now I think you can see the smoke being drawn away at quite high speed.
30:47
Now when we get to proper cutting there is a moderate chance that we may actually
30:51
see some flames on top of the work because the smoke that’s coming up, bear in
30:58
mind has got a lot of fumes in it. Now we are okay at the moment we’ve got no fire!
31:11
You can see how well we’re drawing the fumes away.
31:18
There we go, Flames.
31:26
We could just stop that.
31:33
And what we’ll do, we’ll turn on just the merest amount of air assist
31:37
and the way to
31:40
check that
31:42
is to take this off.
31:47
and listen for it.
31:53
there we go just the merest amount to blow air out of the nozzle.
Transcript For Laser Cutting Parameter Optimization – Fact or Fiction (Cont…)
32:17
I mean all this stuff, the original stuff there’s no smoking at all and then let’s
32:23
take a look at the back
32:26
completely clean at the back and what have we got on the table?
32:31
Absolutely nothing because the smoke that’s been drawn away.
32:38
So there’s something about to set up of the machine that you
32:44
really need to make make a note of if you’re doing cardboard for example.
32:49
Make sure you cover the bed and you get a linear air flow across your job. Turn
32:55
off the air assist. We will now reinstall the honeycomb bed. And
33:07
you can feel or hear
33:11
although this is, got air passing down through it, it’s still not enough to suck this
33:18
completely flat.
33:24
That’s because we’ve got so much air around the outside that we don’t have
33:30
enough differential pressure here to suck this down onto the table. If it was
33:34
thin paper there may just be enough there.
33:39
Now the problem with this is we’re going to be working on this top surface here,
33:48
and most of our air is going to come in and go down through here. So we’re not
33:54
going to be able to use this honeycomb bed without any air supply. So we’re on
Transcript For Laser Cutting Parameter Optimization – Fact or Fiction (Cont…)
34:00
a loser to start with if we try and do engraving or cutting on a surface like
34:06
this which will smoke up.
34:09
But I will demonstrate that to you anyway.
34:16
Now you would automatically think, remember, remember how we produced
34:21
horrible tar-ry shapes on the flat metal surface?
34:26
There’s absolutely no reason why we won’t produce the same touring shapes on here
34:32
because there is no airflow underneath this table.
34:38
You might immediately think there is because there’s honeycomb under there but hey
34:43
all the air is passing down the outside we’ve got no air passing down here at
34:49
all and so each one of these little cells is a dead cell we’ve got virtually
34:56
no air movement underneath this piece of metal underneath this piece of cardboard at
35:00
all and even when we cut through it there will still be very little air flow
35:04
because the only air flow that we’ve got will be passing down through the cut.
35:10
So there’s a pretty fair chance that if we
35:14
leave it like this, we will still finish up with some tar-ry marks on the back
35:20
but we’ll try it and we’ll see what happens.
35:32
It doesn’t do it as it comes towards us, it only does it as it moves away
35:35
from us you notice. Something to do with the airflow.
35:44
That’s because the cut, the smoke that is coming out the back of the cut, that’s
35:49
what it is.
Transcript For Laser Cutting Parameter Optimization – Fact or Fiction (Cont…)
36:07
It might look a bit mucky and it is mucky for several things; first of all
36:12
we’ve got these cuts that have nearly come through so we mustn’t take any notice
36:16
of those but what you can take a look at are all these marks along here look
36:21
every time it crosses over a piece of the honeycomb table we get a mark.
36:29
Especially where the table has already been marked up and it burns off the,
36:35
off the honeycomb back onto this surface. All this debris that’s on here is
36:43
actually burning off back onto the back of the card so that’s another good
36:49
reason why you’d want to stand your job off of here so you get plenty of air
36:53
flow past it as well. Right so I’ve done a couple of things now, first of all we
36:59
put some stand-offs on there
37:04
So we’ve got air underneath, we’ve got air across the top, we’ve got no air assist
37:10
on.
37:13
I’ve wound the….
37:16
I’ve wound the um lets call it the engraving speed up to 180 millimetres a second and I’ve put the
37:23
power up to 18 percent to try and get rid of this hissy cut.
37:29
37:33
There’s a hint of that cut coming back, can you hear it?
37:38
And that’s even at 18-percent. See when the smokes blowing away from the cut, now
37:45
what happened is that the smoke is coming out the back of the cut towards us and
37:48
having to draw all the way around the nozzle, can you see that?
37:56
Now the smoke is coming this way. Well in the overall scheme of things
Transcript For Laser Cutting Parameter Optimization – Fact or Fiction (Cont…)
38:03
that’s probably the best one so far. We can compare that with a sort of typical
38:08
example of something that has been done with air assist. You can see the difference here
38:16
with the air assist how we’ve blown the debris back onto the surface and here
38:22
we’ve allowed the debris to come up and be drawn away by the rapid air flow in the
38:27
machine itself. Now those are the sort of subtle changes and subtle things that
38:34
you need to make a note of when you’re setting up your parameters but nobody
38:38
will be telling about these in any parameter library that I’ve seen. So once you
38:42
get your job right, you will need to make sure that you note the type of table you
38:47
are using, whether you are using stand-offs, whether or not you’re using air assist or not, and
38:54
somebody’s going to say ooh, using no air assist means we could smoke the nozzle,
38:59
we could smoke the lens. Yes I agree there is a possibility of that ,so
39:03
what we’ll do…. let’s just have a look at the lens
39:08
I would say there’s zero damage to that lens. There’s no smoke getting up in
39:14
there and why well I think it could be something to do with the power that we
39:19
were using. The fact that we had a flame there and the flame means that we
39:24
were burning the smoke and it was not getting a chance to go back up
39:28
inside the nozzle or when it wasn’t burning it was being drawn off so
39:33
quickly that it never had a chance to get back up inside there. Well thanks very
39:36
much for persevering with me today it’s been a bit of a grumble session but I
39:41
hope in the end we found out some interesting stuff and this is a prelude
39:45
of the sort of way that we will be tackling in the next session. We shall
39:51
be doing things that you probably won’t see demonstrated elsewhere but hopefully
39:55
I should be able to give you some tips on how to quickly get to the best
39:59
cutting parameters for the job that you want to do. The procedure is the same for each,
Transcript For Laser Cutting Parameter Optimization – Fact or Fiction (Cont…)
40:06
it’s just that you’ve got to spend a lot of time doing it and I don’t always have
40:11
that much patience. Which is why I just pick them out of the air. Thank you very
40:17
much for your time and I’ll see you on the next session
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Last updated August 26, 2021
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