120mm/s 100% Max Power 0% Min Power
It’s some thin plywood that was in the scrap bin.
There’s virtually zero smoke residue there
Well, not all plywood cuts the same and you know that. All the references above are for 1/8" baltic birch. Not any one time did i say the machine was not capable of doing something with everything. Like there is some 3/4" walnut plywood with a balsa wood core that i can cut a lot faster than 3/4" baltic birch. Even the chinese baltic birch (4 X 8 black glue) does not cut the same as the russian baltic birch and thats a known fact. Apples to apples sir.
It wasn’t so much about a particular speed.
The test demonstrates that detail cuts just fine at the same speed as straight cuts, that it cuts the same on any part of the bed, and that min power should be left at 0.
This was very thin plywood. Of course thicker materials will need to be slower. But the “torture test” case is steering through tight curves at high speed and beam power is still scaling accurately. That should qualify as tight detail, and 120mm/s is definitely a high speed.
The top left is the shortest distance to the source and the bottom right is the furthest at 2.6 meters, so this represents the extremes for beam distance. The beam goes through a collimator to compensate for natural beam divergence and this test indicates divergence compensation is calibrated to effectively zero across the entire beam field.
I’m not saying it was never imperfect in the past. This is what performance is currently, you should be able to do detail at 100% max power 0% min at the same high speed as straightaways.
There is minimal charring on the edge and virtually no soot on top. This is a very clean cut. You are correct in that it doesn’t seem to be birch, the stock has a somewhat darker top surface but that isn’t soot from the cutting
Here’s the backside, which also has a little soot but not all that much:
Is tarkin working again?
Hi Felipe
Interesting discussion going on regarding the max/min power. Do you use 100% power when making your intricate cuts on tarkin? Thanks!
It’s interesting that you write this because where my test piece didn’t cut at all was in fact on the left side. But I was not using the 100% power setting that Danny suggested which I will try when I get back there. Is your minimum power 0? I follow a guy who has some great videos out regarding laser cutting. He always says minimum power should be half or less because as the laser makes a direction change, if you don’t have the minimum set lower it’s trying to make a directional change at high speed which frequently leads to less precise cuts.
Either machine should generally be set with Max Power 100% Min Power 0%.
This enables it to scale power back correctly as it slows down for corners, tight curves, and all vector start/stop points. If you set Min Power higher, it will not be able to scale back fully and will overburn these points.
Overburning is not all that obvious, as it will still cut through. The cut will be a little wider and melt/char a bit more. It worsens the grid flashback on bottom. It also accelerates wear and tear by asking for more beam current than the cut needs.
It can also lead to more confusion if a user tries to adjust the feedrate with a test cut that lacks enough straightaway to reach full speed. In this case you could end up in a weird situation where it cuts through ok on curves but then won’t cut fully on straightaways