Lightobject.com Support Forum

Hello all,

Does somebody can update me on co2 laser vv rf laser, what is the difference and
maybe including a picture of a rf laser..?
I have seen this in the manufacturer setting and getting curious what it is..

Thanks
Ruud
http://www.gippetto.com

Glass-tube, water-cooled lasers are DC fired and metal-bodied, air-cooled tubes are RF fired. Glass-tube, water-cooled tubes are old technology that is only used in cheap laser systems. RF fired CO2 lasers are far more accurate when doing detailed engraving, and they can perform engraving and cutting operations in the same job because they use native drivers that install as print drivers. They have a much sharper beam and it is round, rather than oval-shaped like a DC fired CO2 laser. The RF fired lasers are very good at dithering, which means you can get great grey-scale engravings (photographic quality). The round laser dot allows much sharper lines. The RF tubes can be modulated a very high frequencies which enable them to do much more detailed engraving and much cleaner cutting. I have both types of laser in my shop and we never use the glass-tube laser. We are going to upgrade it's electronics some day, so it can use a better software package. It currently uses Newly Draw, which is a very poorly written, cheap Chinese software package (the laser itself is a very poorly made Chinese piece of junk). You want to stay away from a company called "CheckMate Lasers" as they will try to tell you that their glass-tube lasers are superior. That is not the case at all. If you want the best quality you should look at either Epilog Lasers (made in Colorado) or GravoGraph (made in France). Both are RF fired lasers and are of very high quality.

For some uses, the glass-tube lasers are satisfactory. If all you want to do is cut, then they work ok. For some larger engravings such as signs on wood or tile, they work ok. But the RF lasers are far superior for any use.

RBTCO you are confusing the laser tube with the control system. Both can engrave 2D images equally well, what affects engrave quality is the quality of the physical machine (Quality of gantry and shuttle, mirrors, optics and motors). I believe the real difference is that an RF tube can respond to power level changes faster, this enables RF lasers to do somethings better like true 3D engraving (power modulates with each dot instead of constant throughout the raster). Your machine came with Newly Draw which means it is the cheapest of the cheap and has poor gantry, motors and optics and more importantly the control board is not good. The control board is what determines cut and engrave in the same job. If you took that same tube in your system and put it in a machine with good quality XY gantry and controller it would do everything you say it can't.

Many of us on this site have converted a cheap $700 newly draw/moshidraw machine into a decent little work horse using the DSP controller. Once that is done the machine can do just about anything the epilog's can but just do it slower (can't raster as fast). Of course you are still limited by the cheap machines mechanics and non movable cutting bed, but a little TLC on the gantry and a little elbow grease can fix the table.

I plan on gutting the machine and adding quality components. But I have to disagree about the quality of engraving form a glass-tube. Show me a decent dithering pattern engraved with a glass-tube laser and I'll take a different viewpoint of them. I took out the controller from the extremely cheaply-built LECME, INC. NewlyDraw machine and installed a controller made in the US by Full Spectrum Engineering, and it still would not engrave to the quality that my products demand.

This laser I am talking about actually has a motorized Z-Axis so that's a plus. I would love to replace the stepper motors with servos, but as you said, the machine itself probably isn't worth going through the effort to add the servo system's linear encoders and so forth.

Another big point I want to make is that people in the market for a working laser should not allow a slick salesman to talk them into believing that a cheap Newly Draw machine can perform like an Epilog or other high-quality laser.

I look forward to converting this crappy machine into something that will do decent work. I appreciate the experience of the folks here on this site, and I hope I can contribute to this knowledge when I do the conversion. I will do video and photo documentation when I finally get the time and the space to do it.

RBTCO and Gadroc,

Thank you for your replies to this, i had the feeling it was a stupid question i did..
I plan to build a entirely new machine (i have learned it on the K40, but the tube seems crappy too) using the DSP controller and was
looking for comparising betweeen CO2 laser and RF laser.
Also trotec uses fibre lasering, so in that case there are 3 different types of tubes.
As far i could see there are only CO2 lasers for diy machines in the market,is there also an supplier for the RF or fibre?
I have seen the gravograph(nearby my workshop and visited a demo) and the trotec, these are indeed looking indicredible, however the investment too.
Does anyone know a supplier for RF or Fibre?

Regards,
Ruud
www.gippetto.com

No such thing as a stupid question.

RF tubes can be had form manufacturers such as Cogent and SynRad. Not sure about the fiber optics which are usually used in YAG lasers for engraving metal. The fiber optic allows the laser to travel further without degradation of the beam. Here's a good reference: http://www.uslasercorp.com/envoy/fobd.html

RBTCO,

Thanks for reply, will check the website.
Yesterday i was contacted by a company in NL who distributes the synrad tubes, i have seen there is a lot different models,
so i will get advice from these guys about what to choose ( www.lasercutter.nl or http://www.laser2000.nl/uk/ ) .
I would to stay with the lasercad and awc608 card, do you or anybody have experience with this and combined with synrad laser?

Thanks
Ruud

I do not have any experience with that combination of equipment. One of our laser has a SynRad tube which is in need of some work. It's 7 years old and is starting to cold-fire too often. It is installed in our GCC Venus. Great machine. GCC is top of the line Chinese-made laser. I need to disassemble it and give it a thorough cleaning and calibration.