BEGINNER Laser Engraving and cutting tutorial with the Sculpfun S9

hi everyone ainsley here from small fry creations where we tackle everything diy and this week we're diving into the world of lasers and seeing if as an amateur you can get up and running in one day let's roll the intro and see if it's possible as you've seen in the intro today's video is all about learning laser engraving and cutting the great folks over at banggood recently reached out to me and asked me if there was a product i would be interested in reviewing or testing and i thought this was a great opportunity as i've wanted to add a laser engraver to the workshop for quite some time and i was literally about to press go on a purchase anyway now they haven't paid me for this video other than supplying me with the laser engraver and i thought it would be unfair for me to review and test the product i have never seen in real life nor have i ever used a laser engraver before so i thought this was a perfect opportunity to take you along on the journey as an amateur to see just how easy or hard it is to get up and running with laser engraving this is the scofen s9 laser engraver and our first step is to get it unpacked have a look at the parts and get it together [Music] first things first everything came packed really nicely in the box each piece was in its own little section of foam so it means that it's probably not going to get damaged in transit which is good to know i've got the instructions they put everything in its own little package which is kind of nice and hopefully will be helpful when i get to assembly they have also included all of the stuff or looks like all of the stuff that you will need to put it together so technically i should not have to leave this table to get this laser engraver together so let's get it together and have a look let's see what it's like [Music] the scofen s9 laser engraver is all put together and so far i am super duper impressed i have nothing to compare it to but to put this together it probably took me around about 40 minutes and bear in mind i am filming this for youtube so it means i have to move the camera around multiple times so you're probably talking somewhere around 25 minutes to half an hour to put it together all of the screws are clearly labeled you only really need the one tool from this bag to put it together the instructions are in color and to be honest you don't even really need to read the words just looking at the pictures is enough to get it together and it is really easy we're now up to the point where we need to try and use this thing and we need some software and for software i am going to use light burn that's what everyone recommends it is a paid service there are some free ones out there but i plan on using this quite a lot in the future so i want to start off on the right foot and go with the software that everyone recommends especially because i have no experience so i need to go and get my computer and download light burn onto it and get it set up and then we can have a go using this thing [Music] i'm just going to put my glasses on just to be safe oh this is a look i can get around okay let's turn it on live burn is downloaded onto the laptop so we are now at the point where we can start using the laser engraver and when you watch so many videos out there everyone starts by engraving their logo onto the test material that the company sends you now that's great but what settings do you use because i have absolutely no idea and to be honest when i opened up light burn i was a little overwhelmed with what you can change you can change the speed you can change the power amongst a bunch of other settings that you can change and really where do you begin so i'm going to take it a step back i have found a great tutorial by gil who runs the youtube channel laser livestream and i will link these videos that i'm referencing down in the description below in the event that you want to check them out as well and through doing these tests i'm hoping i can learn a a little bit about the laser and be a little bit about changing the settings what does that do and how does it affect the outcome so i've gone ahead and get my test file all set up a couple of safety things need to make sure i'm wearing my laser goggles to protect my eyes from the laser beam and i'm also going to open up the roller door to my right and i have a fan on the other side of the room that is going to blow all of the dust and fumes out to make sure that i am in a safe environment so if you are in an enclosed space make sure you are taking all of your safety precautions i'm a little excited i'm a little nervous if i'm going to be honest with you but the best way to learn is to get in and we have to remember if we make a mistake it's just proof that we were trying so let's have a go [Music] i finished running the test but before we get into the results of the test i want to run through a couple of issues that i ran into and how i fixed them now with this gantry and putting on the belts in the instructions it says put them on pull them tight and screw them down which is what i did and then the next step it says tilt it to a 45 degree angle and the gantry should be able to slowly move down with gravity however in doing that when i turned the laser on it would not move front to back i could hear it getting caught and it wasn't a smooth action after a little bit of trial and error i worked out by just pulling the belts tight and screwing them down it was working perfectly fine and it was a nice and smooth action so it was me i would skip the 45 degree angle test the next thing that i had issues with is when i was trying to line up my plywood on light burn you can use a function called frame which moves the laser around not actually on so you can tell where it's going to burn so you can make sure that you have your material in the right spot and when i was doing that it kept running in to the edges here and i couldn't work out why that was turns out that you need to have the laser in its home position or zero position before you turn the laser on because as soon as you turn the laser on that is what it registers at its home point when i was turning it on i had it randomly sitting somewhere and then that's what it was registering at its zero point so when i was putting laying things out on the bed in light burn it wasn't correlating with what the actual laser was doing now that i have worked that out the test was seamless and worked really well so let's have a look at the results i'll show you some close-ups of these as we go through i followed gil's instructions super easy i ran with 2500 speed 2 1500 and all with 100 power with this laser the skofin s9 you can easily tell that it handles quite well at 2500 and 2000 at the 1500 speed you it's quite a deep engraving and you can see a little bit of charring around the edges so now that i have run this test and i've got a little bit of an idea of what i'm doing it wouldn't be a laser engraving video if i didn't do my logo on the test material so that is what i'm going to do now get my logo imported into light burn and set that up and let's get burning [Music] alright i have engraved my logo onto my test material and i use the settings as per the test that we just did and gil's tutorial and we went with 2 500 millimeters per second and 100 power and although the logo looks quite good there's a little bit too much charring for my liking i wanted to see if i could dial in the settings a little more so i dropped the speed back to 1500 millimeters per second still at 100 power and three quarters of the way through the cut i could tell that was just too slow and the engraving was just too deep so i then change the settings once again to 2700 millimeters per second and 80 power and i'm not an expert as we know but to me that looks really good and something i would be happy with to use so within a day you can 100 go from having a laser in a box to being set up and engraving on material which is really cool but i want to take it one step further and see how this machine cuts the scalpen s9 is designed to cut up to 15 millimeters thick material so i'm going to adjust my logo so that i can cut it out and then we're going to come back and test it out on some 15 mil basswood as well as some three mil plywood and see what the results are so let's jump back into light burn get those settings dialed in and let's get cutting [Music] i think i have made all of the necessary changes in light burn so that i can engrave my logo and cut it out but when it comes to cutting with the laser there are some accessories i'm going to need to add the first one being something to protect the workbench so for that i've picked up a sheet of galvanized metal they say you can use aluminium but they also say the galvanized metal is better as it is a duller metal and will do a better job of deflecting the laser beam so this will be the base now from there i need to elevate my work piece and often people will use something that they call a honeycomb bed or a laser cutting bed now here in australia i did a ton of research in googling i don't know if it's just because i'm terrible at googling but i could not find a honeycomb bed that was a a decent size and b delivered to the house for less than like 150 160 so i thought i could do better and i needed to make my own and i came across this fantastic channel called your couch sucks i love the channel name and i will link it below but he creates his own diy laser cutting bed and it's super simple it's just some scrap plywood with some galvanized mesh stapled to it and this will be perfect to elevate my work piece and get hopefully a really nice cut so now that i've got the accessories i can go ahead and set up the skull foot s9 and let's just test how good it is at cutting and whether or not my settings are right so let's get into it [Music] all right let's see if this worked and it cut out if i push on it i think it's cut all the way through it looked like it when i was watching it as it was cutting through on the camera i could see it reflecting down onto the metal so let's see it worked check that out that looks so cool looks like a cloud on the end but that is the blade from the logo so that was four passes i think wow that is so so cool that it can do that i love it i absolutely love it so that was on three mil plywood so the step up from this is this golfin s9 should be able to cut up to 15 mils so i think that's what this is this is the test material that they send with the laser i think it's basswood or some sort of soft wood so let's give this a try i'm going to do exactly the same cut but with this but i'm obviously going to up the number of passes on the cut setting because it'll need more but as a starting point that looks so cool the offset feature in lifeburn is awesome love it this has got me excited all right let's try on the thicker material and see what happens all right let's see if this worked yes it has look at that that looks fantastic it's so sharp and so crisp i'm really impressed with the laser engraver i can't believe the stuff that it can do now i did measure this material before i put it on the laser bed this is 10 mil thick it would be basswood or some sort of soft wood this golfing s9 is designed to cut up to 15 mil i don't have any 15mm in the workshop to test that theory but this cut through is such ease that i would say it wouldn't have an issue going up to the 15 mil i'm pretty sure i set the computer to 20 passes and i was watching it cut through the camera and i reckon at around about past 16 it was already cutting through so i could definitely dial in those settings to be a little bit more efficient but this is so cool now before i say goodbye to you there's three tips that i want to share with you that have really helped me as i have gone through this process and i am hoping with this video and those tips if you want to go down the path of getting into laser engraving you should be able to get up and running within the day so let me switch around this stuff and we'll talk about the three tips now my tip number one is to enable the laser fire button what this does is it turns the laser on without actually starting the project and allows you to see where the laser is on the workpiece now to do this you need to go to settings in lifeburn and enable the laser fire button and then from there you can go to the move tab and you can set your power at one percent and when you click that fire button the laser will turn on and you can see where it is on the work piece once you've got the work piece all aligned you can switch the fire button off and that will turn the laser off tip number two has to do with starting positions by far this was the thing i struggled with the most throughout this project it took me ages to work out how the grid in light burn relates to the laser bed in real life and what i mean by that is if i had a piece of plywood cut to the exact bed size in this case 410 mil by 420 mil and i had my logo laid out in the center of my grid on light burn by default it was printing in the lower left corner of my work piece and i could not work out why that was happening after a little bit of research i came across a fantastic video that really simplifies the solution and it all comes down to starting points there are three options but for this video i'm going to run with two as i think that's simple and it's what i can see myself using in the future option number one is current position now from my understanding and testing what that means is regardless of where your project is laid out on the grid in light burn it is going to print from wherever the laser is currently sitting in real life if i switch it to option two which is absolute position it puts the starting point in the lower left corner which to me makes sense because that is where the laser is sitting so now if i have my logo laid out in the center the laser is going to move to the center to make the cut or the engrave now to help me align my projects after this video i'm going to get some seven mil plywood and i'm going to cut it to the exact dimensions of the inside of the laser and i am going to engrave a grid onto that 7mm plywood that will help me align my projects in the future tip number three is all about framing and there are two options option number one is using the frame method where the laser will move around the outer bounds of the project without turning the laser on or option two which is the location option and when you've got this turned on you can be clicking on points on your project and the laser will respond moving to those points as you click them on the grid now what this does is it allows you to confirm that you've got the material in a the right spot but also confirming that the project size will actually fit on the material that you're using so there you have it they're my three tips to finish off this project and i want to say a huge thank you to banggood for sending me the skofin s9 to test i'll leave links in the description box below to this particular laser and in terms of price it does move around a bit considering the exchange rate at the time of this video it's around about 500 aussie dollars now like i said at the beginning of this video i have absolutely nothing to compare this to but i am seriously impressed with the capabilities of the skolfen s9 the cuts are clean the prints are crisp and i'm really excited to use this laser engraver in projects in the future now the next project for this guy is not actually going to be done on the laser it's going to be an enclosure for the laser to sit in we're in a woodworking shop there is sawdust and i need to protect the laser from the sawdust so that is going to be my next project now i really hope that you have found this video helpful in the event that you want to get up and running with a laser engraver yourself if you have found this video helpful or enjoyed it help me out by hitting those subscribe and like buttons and i'll see you on the next one you

Channel: Small Fry Creations

Views: 519,406

Keywords: beginner, laser engraving, laser cutting, beginner laser engraver, beginner laser cutter, beginner laser engraving machine, learn laser engraving, light burn, how to, sculpfun s9 90w, sculpfun s9 review, sculpfun s9 pro, sculpfun s9, laser engraver setup, laser, woodworking, laser engraving unboxing, laser engraver review, laser cutter review, laser review australian, aussie you tuber, laser engraver review aussie, australia

Id: oJukNTgHns4

Length: 17min 26sec (1046 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 11 2022