Ive owned two of the the 40W Chinese laser engravers and mostly used them to cut acrylic. Through the use for 3 years I learnt and understood the machines and eventually was pretty happy with the 40W laser engravers. Recently however because of the amount of cutting and my desire to try and cut thicker acrylic faster I decided to purchase a 100W laser.
The new machine arrived and I spent the day setting it up. Did all the connections for air, water exhaust; Aligned the mirrors; found the Z focus height for the lens, struggled with the poorly documented software and the seller provided CD not working. And after many tries I got Laser CAD software and the USB drivers from < https://buildyourcnc.com/item/Laser-...Control-System > and finally got the laser to connect to my computer.
Now the problem:
I know the mirrors are properly aligned for sure; I checked and re checked it; Also I did a focus test and Im sure I am running the cut at the focus of the lens.
When I do a test fire (short pulse) the focused beam penetrates through almost 1/4" acrylic with no problem. The spot size is small (I would guess ~ 250 - 500um or lesser). However when I try to run a cut (dxf file imported into the Laser CAD software and it downloads the cut file to the Laser); its terrible, the cut lines width (cut Kerf) are huge (~ 1/16" wide) and the beam does not penetrate more than 1/16" into the plastic.
Im running it as a cut (not engraving) and my laser power (max power is 85%); cut speeds are pretty slow at 10mm/s. With similar speeds on my 40W laser I was able to cut through 1/8" acrylic with not trouble but this 100W laser is struggling and the cut width is huge (again same spot and focus height I get a very tiny spot that goes all the way through the plastic when I fire a test shot).
Any one have any ideas what is going on?
Also, the software is new to me; Anyone have ideas on what the system parameters should be set to? I want to say its something to do with the machine parameters but I can seem to figure it out..
Any help would be hugely appreciated.
Thanks,
Rohan
