The Tangerine Tiger Series with Russ Sadler
In this Series, Russ has purchased a new 500 x 300mm, 50W laser machine from eBay with a view to modifying and upgrading it. In fact, he rips out the glass laser tube and high voltage power supply and replaces them with an RF laser source and PSU from Cloudray. Find out how this RF Laser Engraver compares to a glass CO2 laser tube and decide for yourself if it’s worth it!
If you are considering purchasing an air cooled CO2 laser machine with an RF laser tube source from one of the big boy suppliers, I would suggest you check out this series before making a decision!
Contents
I am beginning to question high speed engraving with an RF CO2 laser. The underlying principle seems to be limited by the power available. The higher the engraving speed the more power is required to match the damage threshold of the material you are marking. That is a simple physics fact. So is high speed engraving with RF a bit of an illusion where the engraving speed is actually low but the acceleration is high.
This video shows how slow speed and high accelerations can yield faster cycle times under certain circumstances and that depth of cut (colour) disappears as speed increases. RF refers to the means by which the beam is generated and not the manner in which the beam is controlled. That control is managed by a simple fixed amplitude PWM signal that allows only duty cycle and frequency control. I will go hunting for some POSITIVES in the next session. Response speed promises to be one.
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Transcript for RF Laser Engraver: What Is The Point Of Hyperdrive?
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0:00welcome to another session with my
0:01little tangerine tiger
0:04baby tabby cat that i discussed last
0:07time
0:08but today we’ll find out a little bit
0:11more about
0:12what this little beast can do um
0:15i’m very confident that it will run
0:19fast i’m not quite too confident now
0:23that the rf laser will be able to keep
0:25up with this
0:28but we will find out
0:33so the first thing we’ve got to do is to
0:36jump into the vendor settings and
0:38oh no the first thing i’ve got to do
0:42is to apologize to who knows how many
0:45people
0:46it’s been a hectic couple of weeks
0:48trying to get the new parts of this
0:50shipped to different people now
0:54lots of people have wanted parts many
0:56different combinations of parts
0:58and look i’ve told you before i’ve only
1:01got two grey cells left and sometimes
1:03things slip down between those gray
1:04cells so if
1:06you happen to be one of the people that
1:08i have somehow appear to have
1:10not ignored please excuse me will you
1:13write again and remind me that hey i
1:16have ignored you
1:18b you’re still interested in something
1:21and i will deal with it because the rush
1:22is now
1:24more or less over and i think i can
1:26concentrate on just one or two things at
1:28a time
1:29now if you’ve ordered a mark ii head you
1:32will require
1:33some of these targets to help you set up
1:36with
1:36now quite a few people i think most
1:39people
1:40i’ve sent a copy of the targets to even
1:43those people sometimes with a mark one
1:45head which these won’t fit
1:46so if you have not got any of these
1:49targets by the time you come to use your
1:51mark ii head please contact me again
1:54and i will send you the file so you can
1:56make some apologies over
1:58let’s get back to the current project
2:00the primary essence of this machine
Transcript for RF Laser Engraver: What Is The Point Of Hyperdrive? (Cont…)
2:03is to be an engraving machine a fast
2:05engraving machine
2:06we don’t need speed for cutting we only
2:09need
2:10speed for engraving so what i’ve got on
2:12here i’ve got my compound lens
2:14so i can get the thinnest possible line
2:16and we’re going to do a very
2:18simple test on here to start with to see
2:20how the machine is configured
2:21from the back so i’ve just set that up
2:24to
2:25about 11.2 i have not got any extraction
2:29on at the moment because we’re not going
2:30to produce huge amounts of
2:32smoke i’ve got the power on here set to
2:3525 kilohertz 100
2:38power there’s no pulsing involved at all
2:41this is
2:41exactly like a glass tube laser now but
2:4530 watts
2:48now you can see what’s happening
2:51we’ve got a large amount of over travel
2:54at the end
2:54of the stroke now how much is that over
2:58travel
3:00well let me do another one and i’ll show
3:01you what i’m going to do to measure the
3:03over travel
3:04i’ve just got a drill here which i’m
3:06going to lay in the bearing track i’m
3:08running the program
3:09at 500 millimeters a second that’s the
3:12top speed
3:13that has been allowed on this machine
3:15and i’ll show you where that’s been
3:16allowed
3:18in a few moments so what i’m going to do
3:21is gently
3:22push that
3:29and if you look carefully you’ll see
3:31just there that there’s an
3:33oil mark where the wiper has pushed the
3:36oil
3:37to exactly that place there where my
3:39drill is
3:40i’m going to move very gently onto that
3:43drill
3:43and there we go so now if i put another
3:46pulse down
3:48there that will tell me what the over
3:50travel was between the end of the
3:51program
3:53and that pulse mark so there’s our
3:55starting reference
3:56500 millimeters a second with a 28
3:59millimeter over
4:00travel quite a few you guys will be
Transcript for RF Laser Engraver: What Is The Point Of Hyperdrive? (Cont…)
4:01fairly
4:03reluctant to go in and mess around with
4:05your vendor settings
4:07but let me put your mind at rest file
4:11vendor settings when you go into vendor
4:15settings the first thing you need to do
4:16is press read
4:18and it will read the information back
4:20from the machine
4:22into the pc now when we
4:26take a look at the maximum speed that’s
4:28been set from the factory
4:29it says 500 millimeters a second
4:33do you know what i’m going to change
4:35that
4:36to 2 000 millimeters a second
4:41you’re joking sure you’re joking well
4:45this is only a safety limit it just
4:48means that when i go
4:49elsewhere in the program and ask for
4:512500
4:53it won’t ever do 2500 will only ever do
4:562 000 millimeters a second
4:59okay so it all that does is to set
5:02a safety limit it doesn’t control the
5:05machine
5:09now what else can we change in here
5:10right acceleration
5:13now at the moment the acceleration is
5:14set to five
5:16thousand i’m going to change that to
5:21forty thousand forty 000
5:25and right and we’ve only messed around
5:27with the x-axis at the moment yeah while
5:29we’re in here let’s just have a look at
5:30the y-axis doing the y-axis is set to
5:32400 millimeters a second
5:34but we’re taking a bit of weight off the
5:36x-axis so maybe i’ll reset that to 500.
5:40i’m not going to go
5:41too high on the x on the y-axis because
5:43the y-axis is
5:44quite a lot heavier the acceleration on
5:47there is only set to
5:491500 that’s ridiculous
5:52so i’m going to set that to something
5:54like about
5:555 000 so we’re right
5:59so we’ve just all we’ve done is really
6:01allowed the machine now
6:02if we want to run faster so we can exit
6:06from here
6:07and now we can go and reset things as we
6:09need them in the user tab
6:11the first thing we have to do again when
6:13we get in here is to read and you can
6:15see the maximum acceleration in here at
6:17the moment is set to 3 000.
6:19we’re going to put that up to 20 000
6:23remember 3 000 to 20 000
6:2820 000 if i’ve exceeded
6:32the capability of the stepper motor
6:36to accelerate that fast you will hear it
6:39and see it it’s not dangerous
6:42so don’t get worried run exactly the
6:44same program at 500 millimeters a second
6:47but this time the acceleration factor
6:50has gone from three
6:51to twenty
6:59move on to my drill and
7:02pulse i have demonstrated this before
7:05but now you can clearly see
7:07the effect of acceleration
7:11we had 25 28 millimeters it took to slow
7:14down
7:14stop turn around and come back to do a
7:17scan
7:18look at the relationship between the
7:20distance of
7:21over travel and the distance of actual
7:24scanning
7:25it takes longer to slow down and turn
7:28round than it does to actually do the
7:30scan line itself
7:32and that was done with a 3 000
7:34millimeters
7:35per second per second acceleration
7:39this is the same program with 20
7:42000 millimeters per second per second
7:47i’m not going to push it too much
7:49further than that because
7:51i’m going to now do something
7:52significantly different
7:54i’m going to push the speed up to a
7:56thousand
7:58and see whether or not at a thousand
8:00millimeters a second
Transcript for RF Laser Engraver: What Is The Point Of Hyperdrive? (Cont…)
8:02what the effect is with twenty thousand
8:05millimeters a second a second
8:10acceleration
8:18okay so here we are at a thousand
8:19millimeters a second
8:21and i’m going to now run this with an
8:24acceleration of 30
8:26000 millimeters a second a second
8:30yeah i can see where it is
8:34it’s just there so go from 31 to 23 now
8:41the question is how much further can we
8:43go with the acceleration
8:45should we try 40 000
8:48let’s be silly should we 40 000 you’ve
8:50got to remember that i’ve
8:52lightened this head considerably i’ve
8:53taken all the load off of here and all
8:55we’ve got
8:56is just this one piece of pipe that’s
8:59offering some sort of resistance in that
9:01direction the only mass that we’ve got
9:03is this head here the belt
9:06the inertia of the wheels negligible in
9:10relation to the mass of the head and
9:11we’ll see what happens at
9:1340 000 millimeters a second per second
9:16maybe
9:16it will lose steps now
9:20omg it’s gone down to
9:24about 20. so now
9:29where do we push it to have you ever
9:32seen this machine run anywhere near it
9:341500 millimeters a second
9:37let’s give it a try shall we now
9:41i am expecting step loss this time
9:44because i’m asking it to do something
9:46pretty phenomenal 1500 millimeters a
9:48second
9:49forty thousand acceleration i should
9:52just pause the cycle
9:53if it starts to go bonkers
9:57do you see what i mean you can’t mistake
10:00when it’s losing steps now it’s lost at
Transcript for RF Laser Engraver: What Is The Point Of Hyperdrive? (Cont…)
10:03zero
10:04and we shall have to now reset the
10:07machine so we just do a reset
10:09because it needs to know where zero is
10:11we’ll be a little bit more
10:13um gentle with the machine should we
10:15should we take it to twelve hundred
10:19it’s happy at 1200
10:22okay 1300 millimeters a second
10:29okay so let’s take a look at those
10:30numbers and see what is a reasonable
10:32trade-off
10:33for us we get 23 millimeter
10:36over travel doing a thousand millimeters
10:39a second with a 30
10:41000 acceleration
10:44if we increase that to 40 000 we can
10:46reduce it from 23
10:48to 20. i think that’s about the best
10:53that we found
10:53to be honest
10:57a thousand millimeters a second we start
11:00going up to 1200 millimeters a second
11:02which is a faster speed
11:04but we get more over travel so i don’t
11:06think there’s a net gain there in terms
11:08of cycle time
11:09in mind this is the same program this is
11:12500 millimeters a second
11:15this is a thousand millimeters a second
11:18and this is 1300 millimeters a second
11:21do you notice anything quite significant
11:23that’s happened
11:24the power is the same the focus is the
11:27same acceleration
11:28has no effect on the color
11:31that you see on the pattern this
11:34absolutely confirms what i was telling
11:37you
11:38last time when we were talking about
11:42speed being the major controlling factor
11:46you do not have any control of power on
11:48this machine to get any reasonable color
11:52we can forget 1300 which we could run at
11:56we could even forget a thousand
12:02we’ve run out a puff beyond 500
Transcript for RF Laser Engraver: What Is The Point Of Hyperdrive? (Cont…)
12:07we just don’t have the power to burn
12:10this wood
12:10even with this very very sharp lens
12:13let’s take a look at these under the
12:14microscope
12:16now what we’ve got here is a 0.1 wide
12:20reference line so i think you’ll
12:22probably see that these lines here at
12:24500 millimeters a second
12:27are pretty close to 0.1 because we’re
12:30going in
12:30quite deep and we’re going slow
12:33so the lower power part of the beam the
12:36gaussian shape of the beam
12:38as getting a chance to scorch rather
12:41than
12:42burn okay now that’s at 500 millimeters
12:44a second
12:45let’s move up to a thousand millimeters
12:48a second
12:48and see what the difference is pretty
12:50close to one you’ll notice how
12:53relatively speaking light it is let’s go
12:56up to
12:57thirteen hundred millimeters a second oh
13:00we’re going so fast but look how faint
13:04they are we’re distributing the power
13:07so thinly we’re sharing that power that
13:10we haven’t got any depth of cut there
13:13there’s nothing i can do to increase the
13:16power
13:17because i’m running at 100 power already
13:19i’m afraid that on
13:21hardboard it’s very difficult to see
13:24what’s actually going on
13:25so what i’m going to do i’m going to
13:27change to a piece of card
13:29and i hope that you’ll see the
13:31difference on
13:32a piece of white card just set the focus
13:35to eleven
13:37point two
13:43and run the same thing again
13:50just beside that i’ll run 100
13:58well there is a slight difference
13:59between 100
Transcript for RF Laser Engraver: What Is The Point Of Hyperdrive? (Cont…)
14:01and 50 but let’s go and look at it under
14:05the microscope because maybe
14:07your eye is actually not seeing it quite
14:10correctly
14:11well there they are side by side that’s
14:1450 percent
14:16and that’s 100
14:19not a lot of difference if i
14:22change
14:29this from 25 000 to 1000
14:38okay now we do exactly the same test
14:40again
14:42now we’re running slowly you can see the
14:4550
14:4650 pulses 50 on 50
14:49off but look at the color of the pulse
14:53we’ve changed the frequency and all
14:56we’ve done
14:57is actually change the rate at which the
14:59pulses are going down
15:01we compare that with 50
15:05at 25 kilohertz not a lot of difference
15:09at 100 there is no difference regardless
15:12of the frequency they’re switched on 100
15:16of the time and running 30 watts at 1300
15:20millimeters a second
15:21the only reason we’re getting a change
15:23of color is because of the speed
15:26so let’s back that speed off from 1300
15:29to 500 we’re still on 50 50 remember
15:32still on slow speed the only thing that
15:34we changed
15:35is the speed
15:42so that is 500 millimeters a second
15:45let’s do it at 100 and compare that at
15:48this end
15:54i don’t think we really need any further
15:56proof than that
16:01i mean we can go and look at this under
Transcript for RF Laser Engraver: What Is The Point Of Hyperdrive? (Cont…)
16:02the microscope and it will it will be
16:04black
16:05like that but look as we get faster
16:10they are all approximately the same
16:12color
16:14the big change is when we change the
16:16speeds is one kilohertz
16:18this is 25 kilohertz so the kilohertz
16:22has no effect 50 100
16:2550 100 there is no difference
16:29what i’ve just proved is the theory that
16:31we talked about
16:32last time this machine operates on a
16:34very simple
16:35what they call pwm principle it has a
16:38square wave
16:40which is the pulse width modulation
16:43wave that looks like that that
16:47frequency can range anything from zero
16:50so i’m told to 25
16:54000 hertz cycles a second now to make
16:57life easy for myself
16:59i’ve written a very simple little
17:00program here so we can just instantly
17:02get the results
17:04at a frequency of 25 000 hertz
17:07the pulse length one cycle has 40
17:11micro seconds and if we use 50
17:15power we’ve got 20 microseconds of
17:19on power and 20 microseconds of
17:22off power if this is a 25 000 kilohertz
17:25signal
17:26that’s one cycle and it takes 40
17:31microseconds now this laser
17:35only operates at one power
17:3830 watts whatever the power is that’s
17:41all you get
17:44in this mode of operation there is no
17:46change to the power
17:48at all the power is always
17:5530 watts
17:59and those 30 watts can either be on
Transcript for RF Laser Engraver: What Is The Point Of Hyperdrive? (Cont…)
18:06or off
18:10at the moment this is set here
18:13to be 50 power
18:17on and 50 power
18:20off and that’s what those patterns were
18:24that you saw
18:25the dashes on
18:28dash on dash on
18:32if we move it slow enough the speed is
18:35fast enough
18:36so that we can actually see these on off
18:40pulses
18:42but every one of those pulses is
18:4530 watts now we spoke last time about
18:49damaging material
18:52here’s our piece of material
18:55when we’ve got 30 watts
18:58on we can damage the material by
19:01that amount and those are the dashes
19:05that you’ve seen the only thing is
19:10those dashes are not
19:13dependent upon power
19:18those dashes are dependent upon time
19:22now we can make
19:25the dashes longer or shorter
19:29by changing the percent power
19:33so the percent power is not really
19:36changing the power at all
19:38it’s changing the average power because
19:41if i draw a line through here like that
19:45i’ve got 50 more power there than i have
19:49there
19:50so that 50 and that 50 join up
19:53and we’ve got on average 15 watts
19:58not 30 watts we’ve got 30 watts in a
20:01pulse
Transcript for RF Laser Engraver: What Is The Point Of Hyperdrive? (Cont…)
20:02but on average we’ve got 15 watts
20:05but we’re not using average watts to
20:08drill
20:09this channel we’re making this pit here
20:13with 30 watts
20:16there is nothing here to make a pit so
20:19there won’t be any pits and this is the
20:21point i’m
20:21really trying to get over to you and
20:23approved today
20:25that the depth of this cut here
20:28is dependent upon speed
20:34we’ve got a constant power that’s on
20:37and if it’s constant we should get a
20:39constant depth of cut
20:43the only thing that can change that cut
20:45is either the power which we can’t
20:48change because it’s fixed
20:50or the speed so if we run
20:53over that pit at twice the speed
20:57we’ll get half the depth of cut
21:01and that’s why at 500 millimeters a
21:04second
21:09we get a cut like that and at 1300
21:12millimeters a second
21:14we get a cut like
21:19that a different depth a different color
21:23so the color of the cut the amount that
21:26you burn
21:27has got nothing to do with power
21:30we’re stuck with 30 watts
21:34if we start sharing it out we get less
21:37and less color and we share it out
21:40by running faster it’s exactly like
21:45passing your hand over a candle flame
21:48the faster you pass it over
21:49the less it will hurt the faster you
21:51pass it over the less it will damage
21:55so that means that we’ve got to run this
21:57machine slowly
21:59to get color
Transcript for RF Laser Engraver: What Is The Point Of Hyperdrive? (Cont…)
22:03and that seems to defeat the object of
22:05having a fast machine
22:08yes i’ve shown you the machine can run
22:11very fast
22:12but we’re not going to get any benefit
22:14from running fast
22:16this is not rocket science this is fact
22:20and the big boys are either using a more
22:23powerful laser
22:25to get their results they’re certainly
22:27not using a 30 watt laser
22:30because we’re not going to be able to
22:32run at 1300 millimeters a second get a
22:34decent color
22:36maybe if we add 60 watts we might be
22:38able to do it i think
22:40that’s the main reason why i’m saying
22:41this is less of a tiger and more of a
22:43tabby cat
22:44yeah we can do something but we’re going
22:47to have to do it
22:49at that sort of speed which is not much
22:52different
22:52to what we could do with the standard
22:55co2
22:56glass tube machine but this is just an
22:59initial disappointment which
23:01i theorized last time proved this time
23:04and i’m reinforcing yet again the reason
23:06why
23:08it’s not as dramatic as i thought it
23:11might be
23:13the confusing issue is color comes with
23:17speed and not with percent
23:20power
23:25that doesn’t work that’s about as much
23:28as i’ve got patience for today
23:29i’ve got to go away and have a think
23:31about where we go next
23:34so until the next time thank you very
23:36much
23:37and i’ll catch up with you then
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