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Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: The Laser Project.
« on: July 28, 2013, 07:44:07 AM »
Well, after a bit of experimentation, I think I can now safely say that the Mach3 Impact / Laser plugin can be used with low power diode lasers.
My design criteria was for a 1 Watt, blue-ray diode laser using a feed-rate of 1000mm/min but as I only have a 100mW, 655nm diode laser available for my tests I scaled back the feed-rate and the following work was produced at just 100mm/min. The results are, I think, acceptable and demonstrate that, in principle, it is possible and that the system works but like my school reports always used to say – “could do better”.
I have used this particular .jpg image many times before (for testing purposes) as using the same image helps me with comparisons between different settings and methods etc. The .jpg has been dithered (using John’s excellent software PicDither), my diode laser was triggered using the TTL method and the total job time was around 3 hours for this 50mm x 50mm example.
The Mach3 plugin basically works by a system which has been termed ‘dot gain’ - firing individual dots on the digital trigger output at up to 12,500 times per second. A great many of these dots appear on top of one another (overlapping) and the more dots that occur in any one place the darker the work is burned.
The maximum duty-cycle for the digital trigger output from Mach3 is 50% (pulse on time / pulse off time) and although this is just fine for a higher powered CO2 laser it was necessary to increase this duty-cycle to around 90% for diode laser operation.
If there is any interest in this, I would be pleased to provide the details of just how it was accomplished.
Tweakie.
My design criteria was for a 1 Watt, blue-ray diode laser using a feed-rate of 1000mm/min but as I only have a 100mW, 655nm diode laser available for my tests I scaled back the feed-rate and the following work was produced at just 100mm/min. The results are, I think, acceptable and demonstrate that, in principle, it is possible and that the system works but like my school reports always used to say – “could do better”.
I have used this particular .jpg image many times before (for testing purposes) as using the same image helps me with comparisons between different settings and methods etc. The .jpg has been dithered (using John’s excellent software PicDither), my diode laser was triggered using the TTL method and the total job time was around 3 hours for this 50mm x 50mm example.
The Mach3 plugin basically works by a system which has been termed ‘dot gain’ - firing individual dots on the digital trigger output at up to 12,500 times per second. A great many of these dots appear on top of one another (overlapping) and the more dots that occur in any one place the darker the work is burned.
The maximum duty-cycle for the digital trigger output from Mach3 is 50% (pulse on time / pulse off time) and although this is just fine for a higher powered CO2 laser it was necessary to increase this duty-cycle to around 90% for diode laser operation.
If there is any interest in this, I would be pleased to provide the details of just how it was accomplished.
Tweakie.
