Today, I thought I’d try one of my marriage plaques using the laser. It’s only 4"x9" but it came out better than I expected. I usually make them bigger, Vcarve and then paint the carving.
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Would you mind reminding me what laser kit you use? Your work is fantastic!
thank you sir! I am wondering what wattage I would need if I am solely looking to add “color” to the cuts made with my Shapeoko and occasional very small text engraving. What would you recommend?
Get the spindle mount - it’s rock solid and can take HI G acceleration and deceleration without flexing. You need enough Z clearance for it to work so check that first.
see above edited comment, sorry. bad timing.
That’s what I do with mine basically. I looked at the 7W but it seems the “life” of the 7W laser looked to be about 1000 hours at 7W. The 4.2W was 3,000 hours or more at 4.2W. The Beam size on the 4.2W was 0.0075" with the high precision lens. The 2.8W was smaller yet but it would not carve as fast and the stopover would be larger. So for me the 4.2W was the best compromise between accuracy, speed and lifetime. Here is a picture of a couple of test patterns I created so help me set the speed and power for a given wood species. The Left axis is the feed rate in mm/minute from 100mm/min to 1000mm/min in 100mm/min increments. The Bottom axis is the RPM which translates to power. My Shapeoko has $30 set to 24,000 so 24,000 RPM is 100% power and 12,000 RPM is 50% power. The scale across the bottom is in hundreds of RPM so 240 is 24,000RPM/100% power (100% of 4.2W). I need to redo the chart as I’m finding I can go 1300mm/min or faster on some things and get good color. How that helps
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