Just built my machine, now some questions...
Reply with QuoteFrom a point of view of physics the lower the better BUT this can cause condensation problems and freezing so 15 to 25 is fine.1. What is the ideal temperature I should set the chiller to? It's set by default to 25c celcius. I read somewhere going above 30c can degrade tube life?
Gold plated silicon glass will shatter if it gets dirty and hit by a 150 watt tube. Gold SI is only really rated to 80 watts max.2. I'm looking to replace the mirrors and lens I'm currently using (being the very first time i've ever done this has "degraded" their performance). What mirror material would be ideal? I see gold plated, SI and MO. Gold plated seems to be the cheapest so I'm assuming its crap or for small lasers, so should I get SI or MO?
No such things3. The little packing case that the mirrors and lens came in has indistinguishable hand writing on it so I can't even make out the product codes or type. But I'm assuming my lens is 19mm, ZnSe, ~58mm focal length. I was told a 150w co2 laser can cut up to 25mm thick wood. I mostly use anything from 3mm MDF, through to 12-16mm particle board and ply but one day I would like to get into the harder stuff. My laser head is fairly high up so I'm thinking a 100mm focal length would be best? Does longer = deeper cuts?lens's are all derivatives of imperial sizes so 1 inch 1.5 inch ,2 inch, 2.5 inch etc. The exact focal point is measured from the back of the lens to the work. That said it isn't always a dead on figure and requires tweaking.
Yup, also consider it will put the air assist further from the work making it almost redundant.4. If using a 100mm focal length, I would have to change the "nozzle" on the laser head to a longer one, otherwise the beam would be hitting inside the nozzle and not completely all the way through and into the stock?
In essence as near the middle as you can get it, doesn't have to be perfect but the better you can get it the better the machine will cut.5. While I've only just started doing some cutting with it, I find it's ability to cut rather lacking - though I assume this is entirely my fault. One of the mirrors got royaly smoked up and the gold plating rubbed off in an attempt to clean it (don't do that again) and so I changed it to a spare I had and the cutting power vastly increased (it couldn't even get through 6mm MDF at full power and after the swap it can burn straight through at bare minimum power) so I can see having nice clean lenses is important in regards to power. But what about alignment accuracy? While every effort was taken to make sure the beam hits dead center on every mirror how much performance can be degraded if the beam hits 3-5mm off center of a reflection mirror, even if it hits the next one dead on?
Way too thick, lasers don't like thick materials, the carbon they generate when cutting sucks the power out of the beam. To get production level speeds on a 150 watt you should try to keep inside 12mm / 1/2inch material.6. What feed speed should I be looking at to cut 16mm particle board? At the moment I have to set it to something hell slow like 20mm/min and max laser power - is this about right or do I need to have another look into clean mirrors/lens and aligning?
Nope, according the Zeiss, II-VI Infrared and Knights Industries the rounded side goes towards the beam entrance.7. focus lens, rounded side faces into the stock?
Buy a router, lasers are the wrong tool for very thick materials even in the kilowatt range.8. What general guide lines are there for deep cuts? For example, should it be done in one slow pass, or several quicker passes and then lowering the laser head/focus length each time?
best wishes
Dave
