Newbury And District Hackspace

LaserCutter

See Also

• Laser materials (what can or cannot be used)
• Material Stock Prices

Machine

Dropswell 1060 - Modified to use custom Smoothieboard controller.

1030mm x 600mm bed size 100W CO2 laser tube Honeycomb bed.

Computer

A laptop computer is attached to the controller and LightBurn software installed for controlling the machine.

Known working power levels

Cutting

• 3mm laser ply: 18mm/s, 100% power. Cuts cleanly through ply, may be able to increase speed slightly.

Engraving

• Hardboard: 500mm/s, 10% power. Takes the top layer of the hardboard off cleanly. Leaves some striations.

Note about cutting speeds

• The Smoothie board has a tuned acceleration and movement profile to make the most of the machine. The laser head can now move exceptionally fast without juddering and still achieving 0.1mm accuracy. If generating your own G-Code your maximum transit rate should be 30,000mm/min (500mm/sec).
• The Smoothie board will attempt to adjust laser PWM during the acceleration and deceleration of the laser head. This *does* work but it is imperfect, particularly at slow speeds (i.e. near the beginning and end of the movement). We have attempted to tune this out and the current settings are as good as we could get. You may wish to generate G-Code with over-scan to allow the head to be up to speed prior to engraving. 5mm over-scan appears to be enough even at maximum engraving speed.

Note about cutting power levels

The replacement controller is mapped so that 1% cutting power is *just* enough to mark the surface and 100% cutting power is effectively full power (50% duty cycle on the tube). Most of your cutting work should be done at 100% and adjust the cutting speed appropriately. Most of your engraving work will want exceptionally low power, perhaps 1-5%.

Engraving power levels

When engraving the 'Sunken' check-box next to the engraving setting describes whether to cut a positive image (ticked) or negative image (unticked).