Epilog CO2 Settings Help

[Byrdman]

Good morning! Just getting back into the hobby, and I have built 3 FT style planes so far. My neighbor saw me flying and said he was in the hobby years ago and asked how the foam planes work, ease of build, etc.

Then he mentioned he had a 120w Epilog CO2 laser cutter at his office and could cut out planes out of foam, and firewalls, control horns, etc out of wood. Does anyone have this laser and know the settings to cut the foam for the 50% cuts? He said the 100% cuts are a no brainer, but was asking me to to see if anyone on here knew what the settings would be on the cuts that do not go all the way through.

Thanks for any info!!

Byrdman

 

[Byrdman]

I searched and found these settings for a 100W Epilog, but if anyone has any suggestions I would appreciate it!

"These are our laser cutter settings for the 100W Epilog Helix:
Laser Cutter Settings (% Speed / % Power / Frequency in Hz)
Scoring: 70/12/500
Cutting: 70/30/500 "

 

[Merv]

@thenated0g & @jhitesma might be able to help.

 

[thenated0g]

So every laser is going to be different. You are literally going to have to setup a cut at 50% power and see what happens. Than go 45 or 55, than 40, 35, 30, 25, 20, etc. You will have to do this for EVERY material you are going to want to cut. And every thickness you have for that material is going to require its own test. Unless you have someone with the exact model you have there is no way to get around this step. Its just part of the process of using a laser. If you have multiple cutting lenses (as most guys do, some are for engraving and than various thickness's of material) you will need to do these test for each lens. Sometimes when i replace my mirrors i have to do all this over again.

I use lightburn software and it has a really nice materials database. Once i have dialed in my material i can save that preset. So i have presets for cutting 3mm ply and engraving 3mm ply.

 

[Byrdman]

So every laser is going to be different. You are literally going to have to setup a cut at 50% power and see what happens. Than go 45 or 55, than 40, 35, 30, 25, 20, etc. You will have to do this for EVERY material you are going to want to cut. And every thickness you have for that material is going to require its own test. Unless you have someone with the exact model you have there is no way to get around this step. Its just part of the process of using a laser. If you have multiple cutting lenses (as most guys do, some are for engraving and than various thickness's of material) you will need to do these test for each lens. Sometimes when i replace my mirrors i have to do all this over again.

I use lightburn software and it has a really nice materials database. Once i have dialed in my material i can save that preset. So i have presets for cutting 3mm ply and engraving 3mm ply.

Thank you for the information. My neighbor who owns the laser said kind of the same thing, but if I could find out a good place to start, it would cut down on the trial and error time.

Thanks again!!

 

[thenated0g]

it sounds like your only working with one material, foam board. So that should be pretty quick to figure out.

Your friend should beable to take out a big chunk of the equation, like he should know a standard speed he cuts things at. Just lock it in at that speed setting (50mm/s or whatever). That way you are only adjusting power. Not sure what options you have in the software but in lightburn what i would do is setup a test job that is about 20x lines all in a row. All of them will be at the same cutting speed. But the power of each line goes up by 5%

5% -----
10% -----
15% -----
20% -----

etc.

than take the foam board out of the machine and cut with a razer blade down thru all those cuts so you can see how deep each cut is. If needed make another test cut that zero's in on a certain power range you want to focus on more like 10,11,12,13,14,15% to really dial it in.