For years I have wanted a laser option for my OF Woodworker. So I went bigger than needed with the three-in-one 24-44-64 watt Jtech laser. It’s a lifetime purchase, only when factoring in my age! No regrets, the challenge of being creative in the CNC /woodworking world keeps you young.
It’s a bit of a challenge to multitask a new gadget, air, origin point, exhaust, and darn, which power level was that on? But, you will catch on.
Creating a set of “Material Cards” helps to develop feel for your laser especially if it’s a new toy for you. Attached is a set of material cards that has taken hours to make. It’s basically a remake from what others have done, only triple. Power levels and speeds are best estimates. Improvements are encouraged.
Will I make cards for every material? Probably not. But, as I move on to new materials, I’ll be at a good starting point for a simple test and a few notes.
VCarve Pro Ver.12 with Laser add-on Module
Onefinity CNC
Very nice material test card design! I agree, learning new skills is a great way to stay young and keep your brain firing with project ideas!
Since upgrading to a 60W laser i’ve been exploring chaning my thinking from adjusting the feed rate to adjusting the power rate. For engraving i stick with 10,000mm/s ( about 400 inch/min ) and try to just vary the laser power level. 30% power works pretty well for me as a starting point. To try to compensate for the S-curve acceleration on the BuildBotics controller, i’ve found I get the most consistent results engraving using “image” modes in lightburn with 3-5% overscan. That helps prevent the corners or ends of lines from burning darker than the middles where the machine has accelerated up to speed.
I also created a macro that has the offset between my router bit and my aiming red laser hard coded so I can use it to easily switch between laser and CNC with more confidence that things will be aligned correctly. I’ll try to share those in the MACROS thread this weekend.
Hopefully i’m not rambling too much here, enjoy your new tool!
I’ve thought about getting a laser but was worried about exhaust. Adding a hood and cutting a hole in my concrete wall didn’t seem worth it. How did you solve your exhaust problem?
I don’t have a laser yet but I do have a fume extractor. It looks like a dust collector but with more filters in it designed for smoke, not wood dust. It works fine for anything else I have done that produces smoke.
I installed a 6" AC Infinity hydroponics fan. I reduced down to a 5" hole in my rim joist as it’s only a 2 x 8 making it 7.5" tall. I 3D printed reducers and used a 5" vent cap with a flap outside. I’ve been using a 4" duct at the laser end so far and it works pretty well. You definitely need something to deal with the smoke.
Just got the 64w laser today. My email is down so I can’t get to the email OF sent about setting it up. I read the instructions on the Jtech website and those seem straightforward.
Is the driver in VCarve and Lightburn the same as for the 14W laser? What is the process of getting it in both of those software platforms? And I will be selling a Jtech 14w soon if anyone is interested!
Specifically, how are the rapid movements and how fast are you cutting 1/8” plywood at 100% power?
I would like to get one for production, but cant find a single real review. I have an Atomstack but due not being able to have a rapid that works, does not work for my needs.
I have the 64W… I haven’t used it with 1/8” plywood but I can get complete cut through in a single pass on 1/4” plywood at 30 inches per minute…sort of…
Here’s the qualifier…you have to manage the smoke effectively because if you aren’t, it will build up on the lens cover and degrade the cut quality so if you are cutting a lot of parts out, the ones at the beginning of the job come out cleaner than the ones towards the end.
One other note, at 100%, the laser is cutting, but the edges of the pieces also show some discoloration as well…easy enough to clean up with a little sanding or what I also do is to drop the power of the laser (say to 70%) and make 2 passes at a higher feed rate…I seem to get cleaner cuts that way…YMMV
I have this in my order, but have not paid for it yet. I am on the fence a little about spending 2k more. I had a 7watt on my last machine and it was great to add logos and fine print. I am just wondering if this is going to be way overkill and if I will be able to get the same fine detail out of this beast. How has everyone’s experience been with this laser? I want to do more than what I was able to do with the last laser, but I also don’t want to make a 2k mistake.
This is the only laser I’ve ever had, so I can’t compare. I do use the 24 watt setting the most for details and seems to be very good.. I really have not done much high power cutting yet. In my case this laser was probably overkill, but heck, it was my birthday!
Out of curiosity I dug through JTech’s website and technical documentation to see if I could find the ‘spot size’ of their lasers.
The 7w is listed as .0035” min with .006” listed as typical.
The 64w lists the focused spot size as .003 x .004 (when you take multiple diode lasers and smash them all together to get higher power, your spot becomes a square, as opposed to circular)
As far as spot size goes, with what published info I can find, you can get pretty close to the same detail level. Detail is also somewhat predicated on the power you’re using to mark the material and how receptive that material is to the frequency of the laser you’re using. It is possible that even with a similar spot size you might achieve a finer engrave at 7 watts than you could at the lowest 24w setting on the new laser. Could you tell the difference at viewing distance? I suppose that depends how good your eyes are and what type of engraving you’re doing. A drop in detail is far more noticeable when engraving a rasterized photo or fine type versus say a logo.
I was frankly impressed they managed to keep the spot size so close, possibly even improved, on the 64w. In my experience with diode lasers generally the spot size increases as power rises due to the optics required to join all the beams together.
JTech’s website has some really nice examples of projects produced with their lasers and based on those examples I think even with the higher power laser you will be able to get detailed engraves, plus have the flexibility to do even more with it.
I agree strongly with Williams comments about fumes, especially if you’re thinking of cutting in the future as opposed to marking. If you don’t have good fume extraction / ventilation you will fill your shop with smoke of various degrees of toxicity depending what you’re processing. Some of those fumes make my youthful DUCO cement sniffing days while model building a health spa respiratory treatment by comparison.
I did notice the same thing when reading through, that there seems to be no significant difference in beam width. That made me a little suspicious so I looked at OptLaser’s 48 watt and it has a similar beam width. I wonder if it may also have to do with how in unison the diodes turn on and off. I’m sure like you said, in practice, real world, unless someone was trying to do some really small and ultra detailed work, there would be no perceptible difference in the end results.
For fumes and smoke I plan on making printing my own versions of these:
I am thinking more along the lines of a hood that can clip on to the spindle for easy on and off. I will just exhaust outside using my dust collection. I used spring loaded clamps for my DC hoses so they are easy to take on and off (something like this: WoodRiver 4" EZ-Squeeze 2 Piece Hose Clamps Single | Woodcraft )
I’m sure there is some risk of using the wood dust collection as extraction, but I think it is easy enough to minimize. I have a Oneida Dust Deputy 4/5 so very little goes into the DC bag, and the impeller on my unit is cast aluminum, so will pretty easy and mess free to drop the bag and exhaust outside.
There is a reason those old rubber cement bottles look a lot like bigger versions of something that belongs on a cartel speed boat
Is there a collimating lens between the diode & the work? That would bring all of the individual beams into a single beam with a consistent size & shape. My standalone CO2 lasers do that when they have a secondary laser source.
