A 30watt fiber 🎇laser can do what a 100watt CO2 laser cannot FULL BORE FIBER LASERS

[Music] hello there and welcome to my workshop every day i have either emails or comments on one of my laser videos asking me whether my 100 watt co2 laser can engrave in metal well the short answer is no it cannot if you try to engrave metal you do stand the chance of damaging your lenses and it's just not powerful enough to penetrate into the metal what restricts it is a thing called energy density that means you have a hundred watts and it's concentrated into the well the size of a human hair nearly and it's just not quite enough to penetrate into metal metal is very reflective to a laser what you can do with a co2 laser on metal is remove paint from it to reveal the metal underneath or you can coat the metal with a ceramic paint compound and when the laser travels over that compound of paint it melts that paint the ceramic paint to the metal and it's permanently on there you can then clean away the remaining residue paint that hasn't been melted on by the laser okay so now i'm going to show you a laser that can etch any metal including gold so this is a fiber laser the the actual laser itself is housed in this box that's uh slightly bigger than a computer cabinet and this is the galvo head an adjustment mechanism uh inside here there's two uh mirrors that move extremely quickly and this is a lens that directs the beam down onto the work now this particular laser is a 30 watt fiber laser but don't let that fool you because that 30 watts is magnified up to about 24 kilowatts that's how it can well if you want cut through stainless steel now i'm going to give you a short demonstration of um the power of a small but pretty powerful fiber laser okay so this is the program that runs a fiber laser now this is called easy cad 2. um it's fairly simple to use however it does have its own peculiarities being a fiber laser and i'll just demonstrate some of those now so we're going to come over here and we're going to pick a circle and we're just going to draw it in here i'm going to come over to this side and we're going to go into a sine a diameter of 15 millimeters and press enter now you can see it jumps to 15 millimeters now the lens that i have in at the moment is a 110 by 110 millimeter focal lens so this square area here is 110 millimeters square as you can tell by the rules okay now i am just drawing this circle because i'm going to drill a hole in a piece of shim stainless steel now to do that now we draw drawn our circle we need to come over to this side and it's on a black layer same as any other laser program you you know you work with layers so we're on the first layer so now we're going to sign an output for the fiber laser so we don't want to use the default so uncheck that um this doesn't really matter to us that's sort of saying just do one cycle uh but i can change it down here to to continuous if i wish and we do wish um speed we're going to say 1 000 millimeters per second so it can move pretty fast uh this particular one can go up to 5 000 millimeters per second uh let me see power well as we're going to be drilling a hole we're going to say 95 now this is the one that a lot of people get confused with now frequency the lower number the frequency the higher the output in power in relation to this percentage power here now if i put 80 here which is the highest number of frequency it would still be at 95 percent but it wouldn't damage the material as badly as it would at 20 uh 20 000 hertz so i'm going to leave it at that this is not necessary to alter these at all those are the three main ones there so now the laser will operate at that level so now i'm going to set a piece of material up and we will cut through it okay so i've got a piece of um piece of stainless steel here i'm just going to measure it for you so this point 0.09 millimeters so that's three and a half thou okay right so we're going to set it on here like this because i want an air gap underneath and it's very important to get the measurement right underneath the lens now with this particular lens it's necessary to be exactly 106 millimeters above the surface of that material it is crucial you have about half a millimeter um you know you have a half a millimeter play that's all you have between it doing you know doing the job and not doing it at all it's very crucial to get the correct measurement we've got the red dot laser on those showing me where it's all going to happen right there now i'm going to bring the camera in the front and underneath slightly and you'll be able to see it go through pretty damn quickly so if i can hold this so that was a very quick demonstration of very quickly a fiber laser punch in a hole through some shin shim stock stainless steel um so i think you can grasp the amount of energy that a fiber laser can actually punch into a small area and the way in which the galvol head that's what this is called can well the galvol head mirrors can actually focus up that laser beam and you know draw a circle and just punch a hole straight through uh matter of seconds to go through that but you don't normally buy a fiber laser to do party tricks like this what this fiber laser is primarily used for is marking when i say making i mean putting a barcode into something or for our next demonstration we have a high speed steel or two tool steel drill here of 13 millimeters and we're going to engrave into tool steel this is going up quite a few notches from uh you know thin shim stock stainless steel this is a lot harder to get into but fiber laser not a problem so i've gone into easy care and i've pulled up the text menu and i've just written 30 millimeter hss which is the type of tool steel that it is um so we're done with oh the size of this now let's highlight that again uh the size of this is three millimeters high and it is 12 just over 12 and a half millimeters in length so it's quite small um so we're just going to put that down here make the way now we're going to come to the hatch now a lot of people have problem problems with hatches a hatch is just that the letters the letters i am going to fill in with scan lines so it's called hatching that's all you're doing is putting scan lines in now the particular method of scan lines can vary this is a radial in other words we'll start on the outside of the lettering and work its way in probably we may use that um [Music] this is called unilateral in other words it will scan left to right come down to the next line then scan right to left so that's unilateral um well that's unilateral but sort of dot dash now this is what's known as bilateral so it scans in one direction only so scan that way switch off come here scan again and scan again and scan again this particular job we're going to use i think we're going to use a bilateral um pen black layer pan all calc now what that means is the laser is going to switch on here fire as it runs through the the letter and switch off and then fire again in the middle of this letter or in this letter um if you don't say tell it all calc it will fire through here and it could come up here slightly it won't be in a parallel path so this just makes sure that is in a parallel path um now this is the step over of the scan line uh which is uh 0.01 of a millimeter um i think we're going to narrow that down a little bit further we're going gonna go zero five so quite tight because it's tool steel so you know you wanna you wanna get quite a number of um pulses uh into those letters to uh you know go to the material out um is this angle i've got a choice of doing three separate hatches which we will do so for patch one we're gonna be in a parallel okay straight across um nothing else to fill in here um it's enabled so it's actually going to carry it out if you don't have this enabled ticked uh it won't do anything okay um that's that one and hatch two um unilateral i think we'll do a unilateral yes i will do that at 45 degree angle out and come through which is fine but again we need to alter this setting to a zero and then hatch three it's also on a black layer we don't wanna alter the layers this is minus 45 so so we got one doing parallel one coming in at an angle at 45 degrees that way and we'll have this one coming in at an angle of 45 degrees that way that way it eliminates any scan lines or you know it it ensures you get a good coverage and it'll do it in a matter of seconds so it's not sort of time wasted as such but again we need to put a zero in there but have it all at the same uh scan line distance and we're gonna okay that so notice now it's all gone black it's colored it in so it's accepted that okay it's a hatch so now we come over here it's the black layer and we're going to turn the default off and i'm going to do i'm going to do 100 100 millimeters per second scan line um and we're going to go again oh 90 per for this 90 power and 20 20 000 hertz is fine you know we're going to be putting this into tool steel which is really really tough uh the only toughest material than this is carbide and one day we'll give that a shot as well so i'm happy with all that so now let's set up the drill underneath the laser head okay now again it's crucial to set the the lens up exactly in in the case of this lens which is a 110 by 110 um focal if i can get here needs to be exactly 167 that's it okay so i'm just going to highlight that now i can move that to get it just right right there okay let's see if i can get a better i can't get it any better than that i'm sorry okay here we go we're back in and that is the end result now that is really deep into tool steel uh now i'll just clean that up a little bit with a wire brush and you'll be able to have a better look okay i think you can pick that up 13 millimeter hss and that is really really deep i don't know whether the camera can actually pick that out how deep that is because spins are shiny and goes really deep okay so i don't know whether the camera can pick that up and really do it justice but it is really deep uh and i actually don't have anything to to get in there to measure how deep that is but you know at a guess i would say it's between 0.2 and 0.3 of a millimeter deep those letters now i purposely ran the laser set the laser settings so it would run for a considerable amount of time to get a deep etch in in tool steel and of course in reality um the fiber laser would would etch that sufficiently to be a permanent mark in about five seconds so this was just a demonstration of really etching into tool steel um and i hear you ask oh well what's the good of that we don't uh we don't need to mark drills or anything like that well this is really just a demonstration to show you well it will mark tool steel or any other type of metal you put under it um and the type of work that you can do with a fiber laser if i can make an example if you can think of a decorative jeweled charm that someone would have around there their neck you don't really think that someone really carves that out do you it's done with a fiber laser same thing with with with rings yeah you know the the lettering on the inside of a ring fiber laser that's what does it um so you can you can imagine you know uh like a a s should we say uh a silver fob you know the type that you that opens and you have a photograph of your loved one in it well i wouldn't wear one but you know many women do and when they're shut there's a beautiful design carved in silver fiber laser that's what does it and this weekend hopefully this coming weekend um i i'm going to take this beautiful brand new zippo lighter that has a solid brass case and i'm going to carve a design in the faces okay that could be anything it could be anything metal it could be gold okay it could be anything but i'm going to show you over the coming months and years exactly what a fiber laser can do and this really is in answer to you know everybody that's written in saying well will a co2 laser engrave metal a fiber laser will now there's a couple of different fiber lasers this one is a standard 30 watt um and it will you know it will do it everything that i want it to do this is also another type of fiber laser that's called a mopa fiber laser now that bad boy you can just dial in a frequency and it will etch a color that you desire it's all done with the frequency certain frequency gives you a certain color every time this one this standard fiber laser it is possible to um etch or engrave color full color but it is very very difficult uh you know you've got to get it it absolutely right and you actually have to take it out of focus to be able to do it i have done it i have videos that i did last year with this laser doing color but as i found it is very difficult to get right and also i've noticed i'll answer the question now as we're we're talking about the fiber lasers i've had a lot of people say to me but that's only 30 watts how can how can it engrave steel or how can it engrave metal what does co2 laser want explain very quickly this fiber laser has nine diode lasers very different to the diode lasers that you will see on you know little uh 5 watt diode laser very different these are industrial diode lasers so there's nine of them they're all fire together they're called pump lasers then there's another three that are called seed lasers now i'll just explain a co2 laser works in millions of seconds the fiber laser works time frame this operating time frame is measured in billionths of seconds so what happens is the nine pump lasers are going all the time and they are should we say filling up okay there's a there's a coil of fiber fiber optic uh similar to your phone line fiber optic but much different much heavier and uh it's got a reflective coating on the inside and um it's much more should we say robust so these nine lasers are going all the time pumping laser energy into the system and then the control or seed lasers fire which all the power of the system and at the laser cuts okay so the as you see the laser cut there it's not on all the time it's it sort of pulses on on off on off on off so the off period the pump blazers build the energy up to a maximum of 24 kilowatt then it all lets it out in a surge that's how it does it that's how it's able to cut through stainless steel and gojo tool steel that's how it does it now how i've explained that is very very lay man and very simple or simple terms so you know everybody can understand uh it is very much more complicated than that and over the coming months and years i'll try and explain a bit better but for this coming weekend the next fiber laser video we are going to take this brass zippo lighter and we're going to engrave a pattern maybe some writing on the sides of this solid brass okay or solid brass casing again as a demonstration but this can be turned into you know zipper lighters as standard and not cheap okay i think this was something in the region of fifty dollars something like that but by the time you put a customized pattern on this and maybe an inscription happy birthday whatever um you can turn that fifty dollars and double your money and that favor laser will do it in seconds um should we say a minute aside something like that so it's possible right you know if you take a sort of um 10 minutes of cad cam work and then operate in time you can actually make fifty dollars in ten minutes it's possible you can do it but you know you're not going to do that every hour of every day um so i can show you one type of item and i will show you many many more over the coming months and years so thank you for joining me for this video and i hope you've enjoyed it if you've got this eye you probably have enjoyed it so please press like and subscribe to the channel that's one way that the channel grows if you really wanted to you could buy me a cup of coffee by hitting the button down there with the hat on and you can go in there and pledge a dollar if you wanted to buy me a cup of coffee or you could become a regular patron and help the channel in that way and it is the patrons behind the channel that uh allow me to make videos like this with this high-tech equipment so thank you for joining me and i hope you tune in again to see one of my other videos all my new videos so it's bye for now [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Roger Webb

Views: 17,748

Keywords: K40, Thunder, Laser, nova, 35, RDworks, lightburn, 25, 51, 100W, 30W, 50W, Fibre, Fiber, CNC, Router, Build, Lathe, engrave, etching, glass, DIY, Bob Ross, Art, Roger, Clyde, Webb, 3018, mill, milling, MIDI, SMC5-5-N-N, offline, Controller, Carveco, Maker, Maker +, ArtCAM, CAD, CAM, 3D, Printing, Autodesk, Fusion 360, Mach 3, Mach 4, NC Studio, 6012, 6090, 6040, Vectric, Aspire, VCarve Pro, Avid, parts, Machine, kits, Grbl, software, budget, Wood, turning, Workshop, shop, tools, bowl, Harbour freight, Grizzly, X2, Sieg, MAXI, Watt, CO2, MIG, USA, UK

Id: CUqVEU0a074

Length: 34min 1sec (2041 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 15 2022