Looking for better laser

[brian257]

I have been very happy with my Lightobject conversion for my K40 laser, but I would like to upgrade to something bigger, faster, and better. I have seen samples cut and engraved on Epilog and other RF lasers and my K40 can't get close to the results nor would I expect to for the money I have in the K40. I am trying to decide between getting a commercial RF laser system like the Epilog or building my own with a Lightobject 1200 X 900 stage and an 80-100W tube and of course a Lightobject DSP.

I know that if I go with the homebuilt version with the above parts that my cuting and engraving speed will go up drastically from my K40. What I need some advice on is will my quality for fine engraving of small letters and intricate cutting go up or go down? And if it would go up will it still be much below the quality of an RF laser. I don't really know for sure if I would expect quality to go up or down from what I am getting with the K40 because there are a lot of factors involved. Not sure of the positioning accuracy of the better quality although much larger stage, will the larger tube outputting very low power for engraving give me better or worse beam quality than the smaller tube, will I be able to run the faster stage at a high speed and still get the same accuracy as going slower with laser having to turn on and off at a much higher rate, etc.

Let me know some opinions and feel free to post some pictures of fine detail results from those that have the bigger stages and more powerful tubes.

[Tech_Marco]

Brian:

If I were you, I will stick with 1200x900 XY stage with a regular CO2 laser tube. It seems to me that it is a hugh jump from K40 to RF and servo. The RF tube itself cost over $2000 for a 10W or $3000 for 20W. The servo controller/motor could cost you $500 per axis.

To get higher quality engraving, what you need to do is to install a beam expander to make the laser spot to be finer. Regarding the accuracy, I really don't see there is any problem with the 1200x900 XY stage with speed controlled within 600mm/s for engraving or 200mm/s for cutting. Usually you cut at 100mm/s or lower. It is always a challenging for a big machine doing complicate image cutting, especially if the XY is done on linear guide. It is worst for engraving. But our XY stage is on "Y wheel" design so it got much less friction and engraving job is much smooth and cause less wobble.

I'll suggest not to use over 80W laser tube if you're doing engraving in majority and little on cutting. Smaller tube is having better responding time (less delay) with lower triggering current. In fact, use 60W is even better or the smaller the tube, the better on engraving. How's that?

RF & Servo is good but fancy. It cost you a lot of $$$. Well, if $$$ is not an issue, then go for it. I can get you a "Closed loop" stepping motor system if you want to run faster. It is more complicated than a stepping motor (comes with a decoder) but cheaper than a servo system. The speed is about 50% faster than a stepping system but still slower than a servo

Or, I can get you a CO2 machine that don't use XY stage but using Galvo (optics). It is almost 10times faster than a regular CO2 machine because no belt driven on XY. It is solely relying on the optics (through changing reflection angle of mirrors). However, you don't expect to get large work area as those big machine. The maximum work area is about 250mm x 250mm.


Marco