Hey folks! I’ve had several people ask about getting some suggested feeds and speeds for the Avid laser system.
Opt has published a lot of information and we have done a lot of testing too. I’ve taken all of that information and I’ve put it on this sheet here:
A lot of the feedrates I found were WAY to fast to practically run on most routers, so what I did was scale down the power and speed. For example if an engraving speed was 100% power at 800 IPM I scaled it down to 200IPM at 25% power.
In my experience on the materials I have cut this works really well. So in this chart you’ll see not only is there a decent list of materials, these are also set to very reasonable feeds and speeds. If you want to go faster you can scale the speed and power up accordingly.
So if you increase the feedrate by 25%, increase your power level the same amount.
I haven’t personally tested every material on this list, but the ones that I have tested against have generally worked just fine. At the very least this is an excellent starting point.
I’d be interested to hear what materials you all are cutting. If anyone wants to see something added to this list just post here and I can get it added for you.
This whole list is based on the 45 watt laser. For those that have a 15 watt laser you can scale down by 66% and you should be fine.
Good stuff here Eric. Thanks for taking the time and pulling this together. This will be very helpful in getting starting points for various materials and save a lot of time and material testing.
As always, I appreciate everything that you do for us!
I’ll add just couple of rules of thumb for the laser power/speed.
Cutting:
Always run 100% power, and go as fast as you can to cut through in both directions (X and Y) in one pass. Diode lasers are usually not symmetrical in power so one axis usually cuts a bit better than the other.
If you can’t cut through in one pass at >15ipm, then speed up and try two passes. This will give you the best cuts. When you run <15ipm, you just start burning because you stop vaporizing the material and start heating up the adjacent material to the cut and charring and fires result.
Etching/Engraving:
With a 45W laser, its tempting to run high power and high speed to get the project done faster. However, unlike a spindle, the “depth of cut” on a laser is proportional to speed and power. When the CNC has to start/stop vectors, or change directions, it has to speed up an slow down much more dramatically at high feed rates than at lower feed rates. Most CNC controllers (including the ESS and the Acorn) have proportional control of power vs speed built in, however, they are only approximations and burn vs power and speed are not necessarily linear like those controls are. Additionally, for most laser work, you are doing fine work with lots of direction changes (or short vectors) and so you will never get close to a couple hundred ipm anyway, even if thats your programmed feed rate. So for wood and other organics, its best to keep your feedrate under 75ipm and your power in the 5-20% range for that XT8 laser.
Your best speed/power will depend on the material, how deep you want to engrave, what kind of fill and stepover you are doing. Its good to make a speed vs. power test pattern file to keep handy than you can run on a sample of the material to get a quick idea of which one gives you the result you are looking for on a particular project and material.
