I had a great weekend playing with the toys. Set this one off early in the morning because I knew we were going to a friends for dinner late in the afternoon. It still had a couple hours to go when it was time to leave so I paused the job and switched off the laser not knowing if I’d be able to resume after so long but it did it! Super happy about that. I’m glad the Z axis holds with the steppers depowered.
I arrived at the settings used here after some trial and error getting some text to burn for me. Basically all I did was keep bringing the speeds down until the machine stopped making shaky lettering. We are at 20mm/s with the laser at 100%. I know I can lighten this photo by speeding up a bit but then the image will probably get shaky. I’m going to try smaller tests (note sure what I was thinking here…that’s a full cereal box side!) and 10% increments in laser power. I’ll post my findings.
If anyone has any suggestion, I’m all ears. I’m learning Lightburn as I go here.
I think I’m getting mighty close. And I wised up and started burning the key settings along with the tests. I was getting confused by which screen grab I saved belonged to which test. These are tests 8, 9 and 10.
The sweet spot is 20-25mm/s at around 60% max power for my setup it seems. As mentioned in Quartapounds’ thread I’ll need to have a look at the travel rates. I’m using 0.1mm for the resolution which is getting me about 250dpi. I’ll have to spend some time figuring out how that corresponds to the end result. I also gave up on the dithering and went with the greyscale option. Hands down better result.
And I switched from 45 degrees to 30 degrees and got better, more true edges but think I’ll try no angle again too. There’s some “missing” happening in here and I’m not sure why. I’ll see if it still has those missed burn lines if I don’t angle it. I wonder if part of it could be the 0.1mm resolution and the actual true capable resolution of the stepper and belt setup? I’m just learning about this effect with lead screws on 3D printers and can only assume there might be a similar effect on belts and pulleys?
And one other thing I need to bear in mind is the “bleaching” that we saw with this boxboard on the lighter ends of the spectrum.
I think it’s time to try this on wood. And big again.
