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Welcome to another Lightblade learning lab, what we see here is basically where
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we finished off on the last session we had a dilemma…. we need full air assist
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for cutting and no air assist for engraving to get optimum results, so
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where you have a composite job like this how are we going to solve this problem?
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There are three possible solutions that i can think of; the first solution which
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we’re going to talk about is to break this program into two so we’ll run two
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programs a bit messy but doable we’ll go back to RDWorks and we will modify this
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program to deal with the issue. Here’s our original program all we’ve got to do
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is something very simple, if we go to the cut layer parameters is output yes. We’ll
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swap that to no, that’s all we have to do and I shall save this to a USB stick
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and now we go to the scan layer is output? No and we save that as a
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program ok well here we are back with our trial material so that we’ve got all
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the data that we need for comparison right now we’ve got the air extraction
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on so we’ve got a through flow of air we’ll turn the air assist off
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and we’ll close the door
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you can hopefully see the smoke being drawn away quite efficiently
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and it stops and now without doing anything else I’m just going to change
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the program to the cut program and I’m also going to turn the air assist back
Transcript for Ultimate laser cutter with air assist project (Cont…)
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on
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and there we go, pain free, not a bad cut around the outside no
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serious browning on there but a little bit so that’s quite a nice clean job and
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nothing on the back
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okay now that’s one way that you can solve this problem break it into two programs here
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is a slightly more elegant way of dealing with the problem I say slightly
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more because basically what we’re going to do now is we’re going to put both
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layers back to outputting so we’ve put the cup and the scan back to normal so
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they’re both operating on the same program still on different layers
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because we need different parameters but they’re operating in the same program
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even though it’s shown up here as second in the list etching will always take
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precedence over cutting okay so what I’m now going to do is I’m just going to put
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an object in it doesn’t really matter what it is just out here somewhere I’m
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going to put that circle on a different layer we’re going to put it on a red
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layer and we’re going to make it a cut yes output yes speed so this is not a
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walk away job this is a stand by the machine job and we’re going to make that
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speed operate at say something fairly slow maybe two millimeters a second two
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millimeters per second and the power well we’re going to set the power down
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to one percent now one percent is not going to cut so what’s going to happen
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in this instance when it gets to the red layer it’s going to go out here and it’s
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very slowly at two millimetres a second going to traverse around this circle
Transcript for Ultimate laser cutter with air assist project (Cont…)
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now when you see it going out there what you’re going to do is you’re either
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going to press the pause button or you’re going to lift the lid and then
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you’re going to turn the air assist on so you start off with the air assist off
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and then you turn it on now in this particular instance we’ve got to make
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sure that things happen in the right order so we want the black layer to
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happen after the red layer and we’ll just test that to make sure it’s all
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working okay
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wrong I haven’t got anything set up in my cut optimise I always leave mine
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completely open if you remember and so what I normally do i do cut optimize and
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i’ll set the cutting properties now i know what i want to do i won’t have a
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choice about doing this but we should have to put it in first and then we want
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to do this element here next and then finally we want to do the outside – job
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done now it will work. Right so this next test we need the air assist off because
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we’re going to the engraving to start with, close the door
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now we don’t have to panic because you’ll see the Machine at the end of the engraving will
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go to the corner and we get ready with the pause button to pause the cycle
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there we go, it’s starting to go round a circle and if I let it go again look
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you’ll see that it’s not actually cutting, see that very slowly
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now that means we can stop at this point neat program turn the air assist on
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and close the door again and press the pause button to start
Transcript for Ultimate laser cutter with air assist project (Cont…)
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so that’s another alternative way
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but as I was drawing that program I had a light bulb moment
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I was going to show you something else, another way of achieving the same result
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when all of a sudden I felt like a real idiot
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there’s been a key by that door that I’ve been walking by for the last two years
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I didn’t realise that that key unlocked that door! Back in RDWorks and we’ll
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open up the cutting parameters for this particular little project and if we
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start from the top we see we’re on the scan layer and it asked the question is
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output yes well we know what that means do you want to actually produce a
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program for this layer or not and we’re going to set the speed as fast as we can
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and then we’ve got this question here is blowing no it says “if blowing” it’s the
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same question is blowing and we have the choice of answering it yes or no now
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from day one when i started using RDWworks I could never puzzle out why this
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question was here first of all if you could switch the blowing on and off and
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I didn’t know whether the blowing initially was to do with the extraction
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system or the air assist system being Chinese it could have been either but in
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reality what it is asking is do you want the air assist on or off logic says that
Transcript for Ultimate laser cutter with air assist project (Cont…)
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you always want it on because if you turn it off then you could finish up
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smoking the lens as we found out from our experiments although basically I’ve
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turned the air assist off I haven’t fully turned it off there’s a certain
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amount of leakage past the valve which is actually making sure there’s positive
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pressure flowing out of the nozzle and hence protecting the lens so although
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I’ve got it turned off I haven’t really it’s just regulated right the way down
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to almost nothing but we’ve got this question here which asks us do we want
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blowing or not technically we don’t want blowing so let’s answer that question no
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we’re in scan mode we’re going to do that at thirty percent power and thirty
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percent power okay now let’s check the cut mode and here again is output yes we
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do want the output speed we’ve set is blowing if blowing yes or no well
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this is cutting and we know absolutely that for cutting we need air assist and
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as much of it as we can get so we leave that set to yes and we’re running at
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sixty-seven percent power so let’s save that program and go and see what it does
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for there’s six trial we’re going to try something completely different and I
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think you might find this rather interesting, no I hope we’re not going to
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get any flames, but hey let’s see what happens? I’m going to close the lid, because bear in mind
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with engraving we need to blow across the surface
Transcript for Ultimate laser cutter with air assist project (Cont…)
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okay that was interesting wasn’t it now I purposely used this very light laser
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cutting hardboard or MDF because I wanted to exaggerate the situation I
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would like you to see just how smoke-free the inside and the outside of
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the letters are and the cut round the edge is not bad either but the cut
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around the edge we can now have a go at doing something about because the two
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processes are separate but together how did I achieve that? So you’ve seen how
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we’ve programmed to create this lovely end result, how have we done it on the
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machine itself well what we’ve done we’ve got a 24 volt solenoid valve, it’s a
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two-way three port valve, and basically what happens is this, the air
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comes in and in a normal rest condition like we are at the moment we’ve got no
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air passing through here, well I say no air, we’ve basically got a very limited
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flow through this restricter here and it’s just enough
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to bubble past the nozzle and give the lens protection. RDWorks
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is “if Bowing” and you answer yes what you’re really doing is switching on this
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solenoid valve changing this direction of flow from here to here and it passes
Transcript for Ultimate laser cutter with air assist project (Cont…)
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straight through the valve and you get full flow through the nozzle now you can
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regulate that flow with the ball valve that is still adjacent to the head so
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if you want half flow or quarter flow you can do that with the ball valve still
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but basically what you’ve got the option here are doing is yes is cutting and
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no is engravings and now you can combine both of those into one program
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by setting the layers with different blowing parameters after we’ve looked at
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these engraving trials and cutting trials all of a sudden it’s become clear
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what this function is and I’ve had to modify the machine myself to make it
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happen now this is not something that either Thinklaser or any other
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Chinese machine that I’m aware of has fitted as standard but I daresay that
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if you really do need this approach to engraving then you could probably ask
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for Thinklaser to fit it as an optional extra I mean I know that they
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modify their machine to suit all customer requirements you can ask them
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to do anything you know if you want to bake cakes on this machine, they can
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probably do that for you as well
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it’s not quite baking a cake but it’s close thanks a lot for joining me today
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I hope that’s been a very interesting session I did say that I was on a
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journey of discovery and hey I’ve certainly discovered something maybe
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there are many guys out there in the laser world that already knew this they
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haven’t told me so I’ve had to find out for myself and along the way well this
Transcript for Ultimate laser cutter with air assist project (Cont…)
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little trial, tastes a bit smoky
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anyway
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I’ll see you in the next session…
