so those desks have super nice edges. I was wondering if anyone knew what settings were used to cut them. I was able to cut 3/4" finished plywood with Dorian, but there’s a lot of burned-out-ness on the edges and they’re nowhere near that smooth.
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We used Tarkin to cut those, I think with pretty similar settings to what is in the library for 3/4" ply. One trick though is to focus the laser closer to the material – so if you use the focus stick to set the Z height like normal with you material, then take it down half of the remaining distance (sorry I don’t have a pic to help visualize this). One complication I ran into while cutting those desks is that the chiller was overheating and the laser would lose power and not be capable of cutting all the way through. Since @jamesfreeman fixed the chiller, that has not been a problem anymore, but definitely a good practice to keep an eye on the chiller when doing long slow cuts and pause if you ever see the chiller go above 25 C (also be sure to report if you see that happen!).
Hope that helps a little! Doing test cuts with your material to perfect the settings is definitely an essential step.
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The edges as you see them aren’t straight off the laser.
We cleaned the edges with fast orange hand cleaner, then applied polyurethane. The hand cleaner removed the loose char and the smoke and sticky residue, and polyurethane prevented the rest from breaking up and smoothed the edge.
If you were to look at the back or bottom edges, I believe some won’t look as good - we spent less time on them because people weren’t likely to touch them.
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