Poll of max engraving speed.

[liaoh75]

Hi All,

I'd like to ask the community what speed people have been getting good results with in engraving. I've seen utube videos of Trotec machines engraving at unbelieveable speeds. I've head of all kinds of figures so I'm wondering what speed you guys are engraving at. Specifically MM/second for the following:

X-swing speed
X-swing - unilaterallism speed

Thanks,

David

[Tech_Marco]

There are two motor system for XY stages: stepping motor or servo .

For stepping motor, I believe that 1200mm/s seems the max it can go. For the servo motor, it could be 2x or even 3x faster. But the price of a servo system is times more expensive than a stepping motor driven system.


Marco

[Telrad]

I can currently engrave at up to 800 but with better motor drivers I bet I can push it to 1200+

[liaoh75]

Thank you guys for your responses. I have a question for Marco. If I buy your 1200 x 900 top of the line x-y stages, can I swap out the steppers for servos and achieve 2000 mm/sec speed? Could the frame and belt handle that speed? I need high speed engraving to as we all know, time is money. If so, could I upgrade the head to 30mm mirror with 25mm diameter focus lens?

Thank you,

David

[liaoh75]

Hi Marco,

I'm looking into buying the 1200 x 900 XLE stages from you. I'd like to first start with steppers. I'd like to get all the components from you including your best stepper drivers. I know you are putting together an 1800 x 1200 machine right now. Can you please do some test on this platform and let me know what is the highest engraving speed is at good quality. If all goes well, with stage one test, I'll change the steppers out for Yaskawa Sigma 5 servos and repeat the test using probably 400 watt servos. If the DSP can drive the servos properly, it would be an interesting development. Could you also ask the engineer what is the proper way to interface this controller with servo drives.

I think the first failure was due to the fact that I was using a lead screw that was 2.7 meters long. I have asked several people and the consensus has been that 500 mm/second top speed for lead screw with linear bearings as far as engraving goes. Cutting is a different story I don't understand why this would be so, but that seems to be the answers coming in from other forums and my laser head supplier. If you can shed some light on this, it would be most helpful.

Thank you,

David

[onelonedork]

When cutting on a CNC table lead screws are great if you need accuracy and a rigged platform but they don't do much for speed. There is to much friction involved and by the time you add an anti backlash nut you'll end up slowing things down even more.

Belts give you much higher speed, but don't do well with heavy loads. The problem is with a belt drive system is that the faster you go the more bounce you get out of the belt drive system. I don't use any servo drive systems but if I had to guess I would say the bounce created by fast movement of a belt drive would be the biggest limiting factor in high speed engraving. Someone correct me if i'm wrong here.

[Tech_Marco]

Hi Marco,
....
I'm looking into buying the 1200 x 900 XLE stages from you. I'd like to first start with steppers. I'd like to get all the components from you including your best stepper drivers. I know you are putting together an 1800 x 1200 machine right now. Can you please do some test on this platform and let me know what is the highest engraving speed is at good quality.....

David

When I tested mine, I could run 1000mm/s for X and 600mm/s for the Y for preliminary test. I haven't hook up the laser yet. But during the test, I put my hand on the laser head by giving it some "load" and check if there was any 'skipping step' happening. If not, then it means that the speed it was running was good.

Marco