Testing the Roly LaserMATIC mk2 30/10w Laser Engraving and Cutting.

hey hey hey welcome to another Valley forged today I'm talking again about the laser Matic MK2 I have the 310 watt version and as promised I was going to come back and I was going to do some testing not only to see is there a difference between switching from 10 watts to 30 Watts you know what can it cut how does it work can you cut 3/4 in plywood why would you even want to try that well I did because I needed to and so there are rare exceptions rare reasons why you may need to cut something very thick and it can be done now if you're going to do anything like half inch on a I'm just going to get right into it like subscribe all that kind of stuff I'm going to be doing everything with the laser Matic MK2 just cuz Hey it it's the laser I wanted I Begg the company for it I was like this this is in my opinion about the best there is right now and I went over all of that in the last video so go check this out today is just testing and uh I don't do testing like everybody else uh the important thing to me and I'll try and bring up pictures whenever I'm talking about something or video is can I use it I I have a laser business you know I do this for a living and sure I love reviewing lasers I'm going to do way less this year I'm only going to work with maybe four five companies I did a best and worst video not too long ago and I'm trying to stick with the best companies and you know first one on my mind was uh rly laser madic I'm a big fan of Rich Louisiana hobby guy and he loves it and hey I was sold and uh here's what it can do all right my number one seller is this Lord's Prayer cross I mean it's not even close like there are some shows where I did a show last year you know 2022 and I made a bunch and I brought them and they all sold out of the first day so I did this show again here just November and I made four times as many cuz I was like okay I'm not going to sell out this year I'm going to have enough and I still sold out on the first day and I had all kinds of variations of it I had some that were in frames I had some that were had stands I had some that you just hung up on the wall every single one that I had gone and so the next day yes I brought lots of I brought way more product than I could possibly think to sell I still sold almost everything but uh those Lords Prayer crosses to make a short story long are a a super good seller and I I sell the uh I teach you how to make it and I sell it on my Etsy uh that's also my number one seller on Etsy uh that and my leather wallets so this is something that I have to be able to make and I have to every single time now this is one of the most difficult files it's a great one for testing your laser not can it cut it most all lasers can cut it um but can it cut it consistently where it comes out exactly the same every single time where you put a piece of wood in that laser it's going to come out perfect and you know it is and you don't have a question it's not going to stop halfway in between because of some stupid thing there isn't going to be one little area that isn't cut out I mean I mean this wood is not cheap I what I'm using here is and showing you uh is true six mm Walnut two-sided uh plywood with MDF core and that's not cheap you can look at I get my stuff from craft closet most of you know that uh I'll put a link in the description for that as well and I've made many videos about it well because I want consistency right I make the same things and I need it to be consistent and this laser and I I guess another rule that I have and you know I'm going to be winded on this because I want anybody who's thinking about getting a laser to think about these things right and it depends on what you're going to use it for but no matter who you are you're going to want something consistent because wood is not cheap if you're getting well your time is not cheap either so even if you were getting your wood for free you spend 30 minutes making a file and it and it three out of four times it doesn't cut all the way through it's just not good so you want something consistent and this is why air is very important that's why the way that this honeycomb bed is set up is so important now some people got confused in my last video because I said there's nothing under the honeycomb well of course you know 3 in below it or whatever is the base of the machine the metal part yes but there is nothing directly below the honeycomb bed and it doesn't move so you know every single time exactly where it's going to cut this not having anything below the honeycomb bed is something that I don't really see any other laser companies doing and I think is really really a GameChanger for many reasons one the little Parts they just fall right through the bottom right so it's pretty easy to clean up yes that's really great but uh the fact that there's no nothing bouncing back up onto your wood makes it to where you have a very clean backside and sometimes that's pretty important like if you're making these crosses that uh yes it's primarily the front that's important to see but people will look at the back and you don't want to have it all scarred up with laser stuff now I sand both sides of course because it does make it look a little better but it really really changes the amount of time that I have to do in make into a product project right and with lasers that I had before even ones that are more powerful than this I still had to spend time you know doing knocking some little pieces out because it didn't cut quite all the way through and some spots it's be because it was very hard to get the laser honeycomb bed directly level with the laser so even if there's just a tiny little variation you might have a variation in how deep it cuts so I'm going to go on about this honeycomb I'm sorry but it's important because if you're ay maybe you're setting up your own laser and it's not the MK2 getting that whole thing level is very very important and it's going to cost you if you don't so this is already done the honeycomb bed fits into the spot the third reason why and I'll probably come up with more why having this uh up above everything is so important is airf flow when you're cutting and the air is on all of that smoke just goes right through the bottom there's nothing holding holding it like if you have a a metal sheet underneath your honeycomb bed that's blocking the airflow so this is just brilliant in so many ways it isn't something I thought about when I you know begged for this machine when you know I already loved it I already loved everything about it almost which you go back and look at my other uh what I like and what I don't like but that that wasn't part of my deal and that has become one of if not my favorite thing about the whole laser uh at first I was a little like because the the honey the little Honeycombs are a little bigger than I'm used to because I I would use like things you uh the little things that like uh work on your on your car like the the tabs that go for your postery and stuff like that those generally work on a honeycomb bed and they help you you know hold your material down and I really like using those well these holes are too big for that and so at first I was kind of like disappointed because I liked using those instead of magnets but it does increase the air flow so much and it leaves a lot less space to get flashback so it's a tradeoff but so far I mean because I'm getting such consistent work that it is really worth it I think they really thought about what they were doing when they made this and I appreciate that the fact that it goes to the same exact spot every time now I'm going to get into that when I get into the engraving part but sometimes when you like if you do an engrave and it's too light you literally can just run it again it will go the exact same spot exactly so you won't even be able to tell if you redid it on another one and double the power you wouldn't be able to tell the difference it's that exact and uh that's really important important I think that's because of they have the uh uh linear bearings and the way everything's set up and the fact that the honeycom do doesn't move at all but I'm going to say that's the reason why I would say this is better than a lot of other lasers is just the consistency to me 300 And1 100 so 300 mb per minute and 100% power is the slowest that I'm willing to go there is a rare rare rare times where I may go 280 240 millimeters per minute just for something specific something that I know doesn't catch on fire but I feel like it's just not safe to go anywhere below 300 mm per minute you know you get flare ups you get uh you know that charcoal Edge it just I would rather do more passes and then lower the amount of speed and I'll show you that when I I show you you cutting out that uh 3/4 in plywood uh you know even though I was going 300 mm per minute with the air on it still cooked it up a bit and so and I'll just go into that right now no it won't do 3/4 inch plywood I mean yeah if you do a ton of passes and you lower it as far as you can it'll get through it but it's going to look like a charred mess here I'll show you a picture of that and it's not something I would do yes I did do it because I was cutting a hole for my air to go out the V out the back of my kitchen and what better way to cut a hole like that than with a laser it's the same material I used to cut the top of the table I just built for the laser and that's one of the things that I wanted to tell you with this laser or any high-speed laser you know something that that will go this will go 30,000 mm per minute so that's really fast for a diode laser but um a lot of them may go that fast but it's going to be all jiggly this one I I'm consistently running at 30,000 M meters per minute when I'm doing my engraving you're not getting any jiggly lines you're not getting any of that stuff that I would get on another laser but it will wiggle your table and and then it will destroy your project because just that force of the table moving back and forth is just going to mess everything up and so what I had to do I built my own table just so that it would be super solid but that's something I would advise you all if you're having on any of your lasers you're running something like 5 to 15,000 millim per minute and you're seeing your table moving back and forth well that may be the cause of some of your issues of it not looking perfect so think about that this does have the auto air and light bur which has been super useful for making things uh but the cross came out just absolutely gorgeous I know that I can do that 100 times out of 100 it's going to look exactly the same and I'm not going to waste any wood as you can see I'm working on some other projects I came up with this this is fine file I just thought it would look really cool as a campfire you know the stand I got into making stands now because of the Cross and I'm like wow it would look kind of cool if I made the stand look like two logs and then you know have a campfire and then have him in the middle that says this is fine it may be really dumb it may be something everybody loves I have no idea but that's the fun of lasers isn't it it's just like huh let's see I have an idea and I'm just going to make it and isn't that what it's all about and I do that all all the time that's how my uh that's how my wooden purses came uh around right I just I saw that you could bend wood using a laser and I was like Wow uh I can make a wooden purse and boom you know this is one of the first things I made just because it's like oh I want to do it so I just did it and there's been many things like that and with that particular file for the purse it's you know even though I've gone through 50 100 iterations of it it's still difficult even on a 100 watt uh diode laser to get consistent so this is a laser I would feel very comfortable making that on because I know it's going to be consistent and again this walnut plywood is not cheap and so you don't want to be messing around all right enough about that so basically what I wanted to to say is 1/4 in 8 in 16th in whatever most all materials uh acrylic I'm going to do a full video about acrylic and using this machine uh but I did one on diode laser acrylic and stuff from craft closet but you know you can get it from a lot of different places is amazing and you can do just about anything out of acrylic these days uh I do have some clear so I'm going to destroy some of that just to show what can and can't be done but uh there are some translucent uh acrylics now that you can use so I'm going to try to go over all of that I'm going to be making rubber stamps I'm going to be of course doing my leather and making the Wallets on the laser Matic MK2 so basically I'm going to do all of the things that I do to sell and those are if you're good going to be doing something thicker than 68 well 8 mm because I'm talk you know I showed you that I'm doing Walnut two-sided plywood at 6 mm and it's cutting it perfect and about probably about 350 mm per minute at 100% power I do it a little bit lower like 320 just cuz I know it's going to work and I you know I'm not one to take any chances on that stuff and it looks clean on both sides but I if you're get going Beyond say 8 mm plywood uh I I don't know if a diode laser is really going to be super consistent for you once we get up to you know the well the 50 once we get above 50 Mill uh 50 Watts I think we're going to start seeing the ability to do those thicker Woods consistently but I would say/ quter inch maybe a little bit bigger is about right now say you want to do something thicker well what you would do is just make two of them and glue them together this is what I often do it's actually a better idea a lot of times like the roses that I showed you uh you make an MDF version and then you make a wood version you glue one on top of the other I do that with coasters all the time because MDF is generally perfectly flat so it's a good medium to glue something to to make sure that it's flat it also has a softer bottom to where you could just you know right away you could sell it just like that I often will put some felt below it or something but just think about that that you can you know make two layers and glue them together and it often works if you want to make something that's like a half inch or something but the hole came out you know it didn't take too much it didn't take too much get getting rid of the Char or whatever uh you know it's working right now I could probably show you a picture and uh that was the best way uh rather than trying to get a drill or something and then cut the thing out or you know lasers are great for some things so let's get on to the engraving now if you watch this channel which I hope you do uh like it subscribe um you know that I am not huge into Engraving I'm not that great at it I enjoy it but it's just not something that I you know I I like cutting things out it's just where my brain goes but uh I was reviewing this uh enclosure you can check out my videos to check that out and they sent me some uh scratch acrylic and that was really fun and I did all kinds of I have this file now I'm not really into the macabra I think that's the right word to use for it or the um you know skeletons and things like that I'm sure a lot of people out there are uh but this file seemed really really good to show people engraving it has a lot of detail to it and since I'm not very good at it I would at least be able to tell if I was doing it correctly and so this scratch acrylic it gives you this kind of uh antique look and and I thought that was pretty cool and uh actually Ry had sent me out you know some of these business cards so I I did those and it engraved fantastic uh but the question I think most people are wondering is what's the difference between the 10 Watt and the 30 watt when it comes to engraving and I I'll be real I didn't think there was going to be a difference whatsoever uh I you know I almost never wanted to even switch that 10 watt it seemed like a pain in the butt because then you got to figure out your settings again right and so I'm going to have to have two sets of settings one for the 10 watt one for the 30 watt so I probably won't do it that often cuz I don't do a lot of Engraving but yes it does make a difference and here let's see if I can put that together yeah I'll show you guys pictures but it isn't a ton of difference but you can tell the difference like if I look at the a in each one of these I could tell that the a that was done with the 10 watt just a little bit crisper than the one that was done with the 30 watt now I know it's difficult because how do you get the settings exact so they look exact I got it pretty close and I'm sure I can show you pictures of that but it it does it does look to matter which one lighter or darker or however I did it the a or some of the details on the 10 watt do look better than they do in the 30 watt so there you go it isn't a ton of difference but if you are looking for Perfection when it comes to engraving you have that option of using the 10 Watt and uh perhaps if I get better at this then I will eventually start using the 10 watt part more when it comes to engraving but I really did enjoy it had a good time and yeah I made mistakes I you know I I don't do uh the testing I guess like a lot of other people do you know with the full car I used to with the full C of like here's the power here's the testing and Engraving and you know here's the cutting I just haven't found myself really doing that much I guess when you get used to using lasers you kind of get an idea okay it's going to be in this range so I would just run tests in those those ranges to see which one was perfect and for the most part that works out for me when it comes to engraving I'm well I'm using a lot of materials that I've never used before so I suppose I should do those types of tests but you know I think they came out pretty good but hey a lot of you out there are going to know way more than me when it comes to engraving so please leave any comments let me know you know what I should do is there any videos out there you would suggest for my uh the people viewing the Channel that I can post in a future video showing you how to do engraving through lightburn and that you really felt like okay I learned something from this video and now I'm way better at it and it's worked for me not just this is a cool video it seems like a great teacher no I have actually put this into practice and it works in practice for me so that's kind of thing I'm looking for that's what I do on this channel I try to show you what I actually do not you know what uh seems like it would work or worked one time or maybe working these theories on these cards and these tests but how does it work in real life how does it work if you actually have a business or you know you actually want to consistently make things because the important thing to me is the idea I mean that's why I love lasers I don't it's not because of the technology or you know anything else I mean it really came because I felt like lasers are are something that you can come up with idea and by the end of the day you have that idea and you've made it and that's really fun for me and I I would imagine other people feel the same way let me know I mean are you in agreement I mean what is it I want to be able to speak to you and help you on your journey with lasers what is that Journey I mean is it like mine or what is what interests you in lasers and so that I can help uh facilitate that and for me this machine is the perfect one for doing that but it may not be for you until I understand like what are you looking for you know and what is y'all's budgets out there like what what should I be looking for uh pricewise that fits what you were looking for are you looking for a machine that's all in one uh you know things like that are you do you just want power but I mean what do you want that power for so I go on and on I know this is a testing video but hey I've done the testing it it does exactly what I want it to do and it's consistent and those are the things the that I look for so how do I explain what it is that you're looking for unless you let me know so uh I will appreciate that um I just be kind in the comments I don't mind to getting criticism and tell me hey do this better do that better just you know realize this is something I do because I love doing it and so if you're going to you know be rude or whatever well it's going to make it less fun for me doing it and I'm not going to want to do it less so I probably won't deal with you but uh constructive criticism is always great letting me know what it is that you want uh I'm running on a lot but I don't know I felt like just having a conversation and when it comes to testing there's really just not a lot to say it just works and I'm very happy to have this laser and I appreciate it uh link down below of course if you decide you want to get it and if you do let me know what you need to learn I mean I'm going to do the videos I told you about all these materials but I'm also going to show show you how to you know clean the lens and other things like that so I oh I also I need to uh calibrate the camera I'm very interested in using the camera but I do need to calibrate it so that's some things we're going to do anyway uh I hope you learn something in this video I really try to do my best to show you um and I will see you in the next one love youall [Applause] n

Channel: VALLEY FORGED

Views: 2,788

Keywords: Laser, Engraving, engraver, cutter, diode, diy

Id: 9KujzgXURsE

Length: 26min 49sec (1609 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 08 2024