Cutting!

Last night I checked that the water was entering the bottom of the tube and exiting at the top. Then today I created an Excel sheet to record the sttings I made when cutting. I cut 10mm squares from a sheet of 3mm cardboard. I tried varying the current and the speed to see what would happen. I recorded the time as well and find that a little baffling eg. a 10mm square is 40mm of cutting but it took 26 seconds when the speed was supposed to be 15mm/s! So in actual fact I was cutting at 40/26mm7s or 1.54mm/s!!! I wonder why that is?

This is the properties dialog and I may have to find out about the SpeedRatio and the repeat function. Cutting at 3.5mA and 15mm/s cut all way through but the edge was black! I don't know what a good cut looks like so more experimenting is needed.

My next task is to see what size I am cutting ie. if I cut a 10mm square, do I get a 10mm square hole or a 10mm square cut out or none of the above?

The next Step!

This is what the cutting page looks like

and I need to understand what all the parameters mean and how they affect cuttin, marking and engraving! So I am going to cut a 10mm square and vary the power and cutting speed to see how it affecys the finished product. I have Goohled this but without any success so if you can point me in the right direction I will be grateful!

Also I want to see what happens in reality if I change the power on the engraving manager.

This is the machine I bought from Shenzhzen Scotle Technology via Aliexpress. The machine arrived quickly and in good condition. I opened the box, plugged it in and turned it on - NOTHING!!!  I spent the next 2  months trying to get the machine replaced with a working one. No luck whatsoever and eventually I got my money back via my credit card company!

As I now had my money back and a non working machine I set about seeing if I could do anything with it. The machine came with 2 CDs of info and blagged software! Both disks had the same info on them and both made my anti-virus software go bonkers! I eventually got Coreldraw loaded on my computer as well as WinsealXP. This is the control software which seems to work with Windows 8.1 that I have on my laptop. 

From trawling through the internet it seems that chilled water is needed to keep the laser tube cool and the max allowable temperature for the water seems to be 20C. There is an extractor fan for the fumes from cutting that slots on the back and from watching the videos, seems to work better if sealed with gaffer tape. The water pump and fan have US plugs so I changed them for European ones and plugged everything into a multi socket outlet. 

You can see in the photo that the lid of the machine has a protective screen to potect your eyes from the laser beam. This had fallen off so I may well use welding goggles until I find some new protective screening!

There are no electrical safety switches fitted so it is possible to open the lid whilst the laser is operating!

The first rocker switch on the left is the Infra Red Switch but there are no connections to it and no Infra Red!

The case is an old case which was for a parallel port cable. It now has a USB cable so it is possible to put your fingers through the hole in the case and electrocute yourself! All in all, very poor presentation!

They sent me a wiring diagram which was of limited use so I undid the wiring sleeves and traced the path of all the wires from socket input to the switches, lighting and control board. Now that I understood the wiring I found that the socket contained a fuse. This had blown and I replaced this and the machine light up. Now it was time to see if it would do anything!