Anyone here own a desktop laser engraver? I'm having this problem where my pieces aren't being cut completely.

Anyone here own a desktop laser engraver? I'm having this problem where my pieces aren't being cut completely. The material is being cut through and the laser moves the full path, but for whatever reason it looks like the laser doesn't fire at full power for the first few seconds of cutting a piece.

Laser: aufero laser 2
Drawing program: Autocad
Laser program: laserweb
All lines set to 100% power, all the same speed.

Anyone know whats going on? Any help appreciated.

250 Piece Survival Gear First Aid Kit

LifeStraw Water Filter for Hiking and Preparedness

250 Piece Survival Gear First Aid Kit

  1. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Managed to record a pretty egregious case. Almost 8 seconds of no cutting despite the laser being on. You can see that when it starts the pieces the laser is shining brightly but when its cutting it dims down. The amount of time it doesn't cut seems to be random.

    https://streamable.com/t2qe0s

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      or post the first 40 lines of the gcode output

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        Here it is, I don't know much about gcode.

        G21 ; Set units to mm
        G90 ; Absolute positioning
        M4 S0 ; Enable Laser/Spindle (0 power)

        ;
        ; Operation: 0
        ; Type: Laser Cut
        ; Paths: 26
        ; Passes: 1
        ; Cut rate: 240 mm/min
        ;

        ; Pass 0

        ; Pass 0 Path 0
        G0 X69.50 Y218.06
        G1 X59.50 Y218.06 S1000.00 F240
        G1 X59.50 Y217.56
        G1 X69.50 Y217.56
        G1 X69.50 Y218.06
        G1 X69.50 Y218.06

        ; Pass 0 Path 1
        G0 X97.36 Y149.58
        G1 X97.36 Y149.08 S1000.00 F240
        G1 X107.36 Y149.08
        G1 X107.36 Y149.58
        G1 X97.36 Y149.58

        ; Pass 0 Path 2
        G0 X73.00 Y120.52
        G1 X63.00 Y120.52 S1000.00 F240
        G1 X63.00 Y120.02
        G1 X73.00 Y120.02
        G1 X73.00 Y120.52
        G1 X73.00 Y120.52

        ; Pass 0 Path 3
        G0 X71.50 Y101.02
        G1 X61.50 Y101.02 S1000.00 F240
        G1 X61.50 Y100.52
        G1 X71.50 Y100.52
        G1 X71.50 Y101.02
        G1 X71.50 Y101.02

        ; Pass 0 Path 4
        G0 X49.00 Y105.52
        G1 X49.00 Y115.52 S1000.00 F240
        G1 X48.50 Y115.52
        G1 X48.50 Y105.52
        G1 X49.00 Y105.52

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          looks normal. Some shit is harder to cut through, especially white/reflective stuff because it'll bounce the laser off until the burning starts and it stops reflecting so much.
          Could try scuffing up the surface, painting it, or using another material.
          Otherwise g-code/laserweb-wise, there may be a dwell setting in your program which would park the head and power the laser for however long you set the dwell time.

          • 11 months ago
            Anonymous

            I'm manually editing in the dwell commands in the gcode for now, but yeah I looked around and laserweb does have a function for dwell.

            • 11 months ago
              Anonymous

              It’s common with the Chinese lasers. The electronics in the laser can’t switch the laser on fast enough to keep up with the g code

              > M4 S0 ; Enable Laser/Spindle (0 power)
              You could try to change S0 to some low value <1000 (like 100 or 300) if your laser supports low power mode, to see if turns on but doesn’t cut/engrave, and check that once it gets a turn on command, it doesn’t have this turn-on lag.

              But yes a G4P command after the spindle should solve this as well (so S1000 becomes S1000 G4Px where x is your wait time in ms).

              As for Laserweb there is a ‘hack’ where you change the ‘tool on’ command in g code settings to add your pause command automatically

  2. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    it's stupid, but can you take the shapes you've drawn and overlap the anchor points a cm or so? Doesn't answer why it's not cutting, but it might fully cut things out.

  3. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    I have one at work that does this and my theory is it's out of alignment. Mine works by 3-4 mirrors reflecting the beam until it cuts. The further from home, the more distance it needs to reflect and also the worse the cuts get. So check your alignment? I usually just run the program twice to make up for it, without moving the parts in between.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      Clean your mirrors and check their alignment. When the bottom right furthest from origin on ours stops cutting, the second mirror needs to be swabbed down. Alignment on yours shouldn't be too hard to check.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      OP doesn’t have that kind of laser, he has the module moving. Your theory is probably correct for yours though, k40.se has a pretty good guide on mirror alignment

      Fricked my post up. If it's happening every single cut piece the transformer isn't getting the tube on fast enough or your tube is undercharged. I would replace the tube the Chinese ones are cheap enough for the 30-40w desktops.

      > transformer isn't getting the tube on fast enough
      That’s probably right. Doesn’t need he needs to replace it tho (OPs machine is really cheap the tube is like half the machines worth), it’s normally solved by longer dwell on startup like the other anon mentioned

      https://i.imgur.com/uXwkK7G.jpg

      Anyone here own a desktop laser engraver? I'm having this problem where my pieces aren't being cut completely. The material is being cut through and the laser moves the full path, but for whatever reason it looks like the laser doesn't fire at full power for the first few seconds of cutting a piece.

      Laser: aufero laser 2
      Drawing program: Autocad
      Laser program: laserweb
      All lines set to 100% power, all the same speed.

      Anyone know whats going on? Any help appreciated.

      Pause on startup, may be hard to finetune if it doesn’t always happen. That or add a waste line before the start of each cut path, it sucks but should work guaranteed. How do you like the super cheap machine (apart from that problem)?

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        Scratch the tube part, I thought op had the $100 machine, not the $350 machine

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        Op here I gave the laser module a quick clean and still had the same problem so I think it is a power issue. That said I've been playing around with the dwell command and while I can get it to pause before each cut, I can't get it to fire the laser. here is what I manually edited into my gcode output from laserweb:

        ; Pass 0 Path 0
        G0 X18.25 Y88.00
        S1000.00 G04 P0.5
        G1 X8.25 Y88.00 F240
        G1 X8.25 Y87.50
        G1 X18.25 Y87.50
        G1 X18.25 Y88.00
        G1 X18.25 Y88.00

        ; Pass 0 Path 1
        G0 X26.00 Y73.00
        S1000.00 G04 P0.5
        G1 X26.00 Y63.00 F240
        G1 X26.50 Y63.00
        G1 X26.50 Y73.00
        G1 X26.00 Y73.00

        Laserweb also has an interface for inputting commands that automatically use them for each shape, though I get the same result.

        It's a good starter product for those wanting to get into lasering. I think most people are looking to engrave, and based on what few engraves I did it will probably be fine for hobbyists. I knew I wanted to get into cutting, but I kinda underestimated the power it took to cut paper as fast as I wanted to. The LU2-2 still can, but at the speeds it requires, the edges are more burned than I like. The lack of a homing feature isn't really a deal breaker, the only case I see it make sense is for mass production, but this is clearly a babby's first laser

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          ok I've tried changing M4 S0 and putting G4 in various spots but it just won't fire until starts cutting the piece. Where am I going wrong?

          G21 ; Set units to mm
          G90 ; Absolute positioning
          M4 S0 ; Enable Laser/Spindle (0 power)

          ;
          ; Operation: 0
          ; Type: Laser Cut
          ; Paths: 6
          ; Passes: 1
          ; Cut rate: 240 mm/min
          ;

          ; Pass 0

          ; Pass 0 Path 0
          G0 X18.25 Y88.00
          S100.00
          G4 P0.5
          G1 X8.25 Y88.00 F240
          G1 X8.25 Y87.50
          G1 X18.25 Y87.50
          G1 X18.25 Y88.00
          G1 X18.25 Y88.00

          ; Pass 0 Path 1
          G0 X26.00 Y73.00
          S100.00
          G4 P0.5
          G1 X26.00 Y63.00 F240
          G1 X26.50 Y63.00
          G1 X26.50 Y73.00
          G1 X26.00 Y73.00

          • 11 months ago
            Anonymous

            Fricking finally got it to work. There's just a few quirks with it.

            G4 will only keep the laser on with the M3 command, not M4 for whatever reason. I experimented by adding G4 before every line segment, and it would literally turn off and on for the duration of the G4 command if I used M4 to turn the laser on.

            G4 will only keep the laser on after a G1 Command. I can get it to pause after the G0, but the laser will not fire until it reads a G1 Command. This results in me adding an extra G1 command with the same coordinates as the G0.

            Now I wonder if there's a way to optimize this

            Resulting code looks like this:

            G21 ; Set units to mm
            G90 ; Absolute positioning

            ;
            ; Operation: 0
            ; Type: Laser Cut
            ; Paths: 1
            ; Passes: 1
            ; Cut rate: 700 mm/min
            ;

            ; Pass 0

            ; Pass 0 Path 0
            G0 X6.07 Y82.35
            M3
            S1000.00
            G1 X6.07 Y82.35 F700
            G4 P0.5
            G1 X6.09 Y82.66
            G1 X6.18 Y83.06
            G1 X6.43 Y83.79
            G1 X6.83 Y84.52
            G1 X7.20 Y85.01
            G1 X7.21 Y85.30
            G1 X7.16 Y85.32
            G1 X5.24 Y85.30
            G1 X5.21 Y85.26
            G1 X5.22 Y84.99
            G1 X5.25 Y84.95
            G1 X6.56 Y84.94
            G1 X6.62 Y84.91
            G1 X6.62 Y84.86
            G1 X6.39 Y84.56
            G1 X6.17 Y84.19
            G1 X5.92 Y83.64
            G1 X5.79 Y83.23
            G1 X5.65 Y82.59
            G1 X5.65 Y82.34
            G1 X6.03 Y82.33
            G1 X6.07 Y82.35
            G1 X6.07 Y82.35
            M5

            ;
            ; Operation: 1
            ; Type: Laser Cut
            ; Paths: 6
            ; Passes: 1
            ; Cut rate: 240 mm/min
            ;

            ; Pass 0

            ; Pass 0 Path 0
            G0 X18.25 Y88.00
            M3
            S1000.00
            G1 X18.25 Y88.00 F240
            G4 P0.5
            G1 X8.25 Y88.00
            G1 X8.25 Y87.50
            G1 X18.25 Y87.50
            G1 X18.25 Y88.00
            G1 X18.25 Y88.00
            M5

            ; Pass 0 Path 1
            G0 X26.00 Y73.00
            M3
            S1000.00
            G1 X26.00 Y73.00 F240
            G4 P0.5
            G1 X26.00 Y63.00
            G1 X26.50 Y63.00
            G1 X26.50 Y73.00
            G1 X26.00 Y73.00
            M5

  4. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Chinese lasers do this. It's either not getting up to full power or the tube is going out. My epilog does this at a cold startup , the first 10 seconds no laser then it works fine rest of the day. If

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      Fricked my post up. If it's happening every single cut piece the transformer isn't getting the tube on fast enough or your tube is undercharged. I would replace the tube the Chinese ones are cheap enough for the 30-40w desktops.

Leave a Reply to Anonymous Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *