Hi all, as many of you, I've also purchased fiber laser (which should arrive on the beginning of next year) and the main use for it will be marking stainless steel and aluminum. In fact, I don't have any experience at all about the fiber laser and I don't know anything about the risks of the fiber laser, only what I've read about it. I've thought to build some movable protective wall around the laser because I have quite a lot visitors in my work shop and the location for the laser will be in open space. But my problem is that I don't know what material I should use to avoid the reflection of the beam through the wall (of course I have purchased also some extra safety glasses for the customers use, but still I'm a bit afraid of some too eager customers who would like to see from the side when laser is working - even any one or two meter high warning sign is not enough in some cases ). I think that regular polycarbonate is not good enough as it is with CO2 laser ? I believe this issue has already discussed here, but so far I haven't find any specific discussion from this matter. I would be grateful for more detailed information on the right material.
Best regards,
Hannu
Hi Hannu,
Avoid letting customers near Fibres like the plague, the nm wavelength blinds for giggles (and the eye damage is permanent), safetywise for screens + public/customers you will need rated enclosures.
Don't underestimate the ability of the fibre system to remove eyesight in a hugely efficient manner. CO2's can give you a chance, think of fibres as the Jeffrey Dahmer of lasers...
My counsel would be to do a good bit more reading up before getting too carried away. (I'll leave out all the stuff about photon energy and material band gap energies as it just amounts to the same as the above)
cheers
Dave
I've found it best NOT to allow anyone whom I can keep out of my work area, in my work area.
Safety, and just keeps questions out of the mix.
I have built a small 3 sided shield from excess rowmark that I engraved warning on all three sides for when I do any outdoor events.
Put together with some left over aluminum angle. No one can see anything with it in place and me in front of the machine. But Best if no one is around the machine while it is running.
Fiber lasers can do some amazing things, but they take time and patience to figure out. Each and every fiber laser is a bit unique, and requires testing to figure out settings for your machine. In my opinion, you are much better off with a co2 laser for tumblers. You’ll find that each color from each manufacturer will require different settings, and can take some time to perfect. On my co2 machine, I use the same settings for every color and manufacturer of tumblers. Fibers have their place, but I don’t feel it’s for tumblers. If you’re doing a ton of tumblers, likely better to look at a galvo co2 machine.
The perfect application…
There are a ton of youtube how to videos of beautiful gun work with fiber lasers.
A co2 is a cw (continuous wave) device and the fiber is a pulse type.
For simple engraving on anodized aluminum a low power fiber will work fine… If you want deep engraving of the slide and frame, you’ll have to up the power…
You have speed and power adjustments… but also frequency and pulse duration … these seem more mysterious as a new user myself…
There are a number of people that have great videos on these… Russ Sadler has a good set, but is usually speaking about what exactly is going on at the material level rather than the Laser Everything group does theirs … I like both …
Try both and see which you prefer…
Keep us updated…
Your profile doesn’t list the power of your co2, but I’d wager it’s less than what OMTech advised…
Guess that’s better than no luck
If you’ve watched any of the videos by Russ, he’s mentioned many things about Chinese distributors…
One of which is that Cloud Ray uses/sells only grade A parts… I can tell you my OMTech was a 50W model and measured only 44W with a Mahoney meter… They were not very truthful.
Russ suggested Cloud Ray when I purchased another co2 tube … Performs exactly as expected. It also had maximum operating current and maximum current ratings…
I purchased a fiber from them and got it 20 days ago, so I’m in a major learning curve, but it’s seems to work fine, unlike the OMTech that needed an alignment out of the box.
Goto Wanxuan to know more.
I’ve been more than happy with them, but I’ve had no issues either…
I guess I’m new to lasering (other than Diode on my CNC which was horrible for speed and power!) so the 80W I bought seems to be working fine. I had no pre-conceived idea about percentages prior to this one so when I buy a good one down the road, I’ll probably start burning holes through my materials.
All joking aside, this one has performed very well and honestly, I had a very specific thing in mind (lasering cutting boards) that I was trying to fix and the $15K machines seemed overkill and I figured $5K was a decent level to speed up my lasering and stop running a 7W laser on a $40K machine!!
I’ll give Cloud Ray a look, I appreciate the info!!
I have not bought a measuring instrument which costs about the same as a new tube and I am actually reasonably sure that the “agreed” 60 Watt (max 70 Watt) that my tube is labeled with matches what I have ordered and paid for. And if it only delivers 55 Watts, it’s not the end of the world either. I calculate with a lifetime of my CO2 tube of approx. 3 years, 2/3 of that it has almost managed now without noticeable power loss. About once a week, I write down which mA value corresponds to the % setting in LighBurn, so I am ahead of the aging of my tool. It is still possible to cut 15mm acrylic, usable parts or 25mm solid wood, fortunately I rarely have both tasks. (I work mostly in 3-6mm MDF, acrylic and BB plywood)
When the current tube can do no more, I order a new one in the 60-80 Watt range with a built-in red dot and the corresponding power supply. I am lucky enough that my modest production has earned my costs more than once.
For my OMT-60Watt laser machine I have paid us-$.8, delivered to my door.(the price and exchange rate is a little different today)
But the point is, and that was probably also the original question, am I satisfied and can I recommend a manufacturer/retailer of laser machines? - yes, I can.
What if it pulls what you want, but only puts out 100hp and you don’t know any better?
Paid for 385 and got … Good people to deal with? I guess it’s all relative.
An issue that I had and that I keep seeing repeated… I didn’t know any better…
I now know the Chinese understand that very well.
All I’m saying is that I’m holding them to an acceptable standard, that you don’t seem to care about. When they advertise and sell a product they know is not what they sold you… I have an issue with that…
Part of the reason we get such junk from them… we just accept it as a deal… In the end we get 'd sans lubrication.
Honestly, the performance is there. I’ve managed to cut 1/2” walnut so I’m guessing it’s close. I also didn’t measure the 5HP on my CNC spindle because it performs as advertised. I’d notice a 70% drop in power but what I’ve seen is people paying for 80W and getting 75W. That’s minutia to me for what I’m doing. I pick my battles. For instance, the Ruida panel had an intermittent issue with the right and down keys not working. I can fix that if I want but I made them send me a new panel. Not saying you’re wrong at all, you should get what you pay for but in the overall scheme of things, it isn’t that important to me to measure. I will say this, my buddy has a 130W Thunder and my settings to cut wood are what I would expect to see in relation to his. For instance, if he uses 40% power to cut a piece of wood, I’m using 65% and getting the same results so I assume it’s close to the 80W advertised. Long term, it’s 2 months old and I’ve already made back my money in net profit on it!! If it dies tomorrow, I’m not out of anything.
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