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Which setting for best acrylic cut (less jagged corners)

PostPosted: Fri Jan 22, 2016 9:31 am
by bloq
Hey,

i am struggling with the right settings for cutting cast acrlic. When it comes to straight cuts in 3 mm the corners look realy good. However as soon
as i try to cut more curved objects the corners are always »jagged« (or how do you call that). How can i improve that? More speed or less speed? More
power or less power? Changes in the resolution setting?

thank you!
tm

Re: Which setting for best acrylic cut (less jagged corners)

PostPosted: Sat Jan 23, 2016 3:35 pm
by bloq
this is what i mean. I would have expected better results with cast acrylic. What do you think? What can i do?

Re: Which setting for best acrylic cut (less jagged corners)

PostPosted: Sun Jan 24, 2016 10:37 am
by bloq
I just recognized, that this corner quality also appears on straight cuts. I had a few good cuts before but now this is the result. The straight cuts are smoother but you can see the coin style on every corner. I did not change anything on the settings of the laser but it seems that the dsp sometimes forgets settings.

Re: Which setting for best acrylic cut (less jagged corners)

PostPosted: Sun Jan 24, 2016 5:07 pm
by rsm5178
I had this too but worse. I think it was the quality of my stepper drivers (10 dollar sainsmart tb-6560 drivers). Originally set at 1/16th.

I have since then upgraded to digital steppers by another member's suggestion. I now run at 1/128 step. It is a lot cleaner but loss of speed (150-200mm/s max). It really helped my engraving quality, so I'm happy.

It may be worth trying out a couple digital stepper drivers. You can adjust the resolution of the leadshine ones through the software. I bought the 422c ones.

Rich

Re: Which setting for best acrylic cut (less jagged corners)

PostPosted: Sun Jan 24, 2016 7:50 pm
by Techgraphix
Indeed, cranking up the microstepsetting to a much higher level will give better results but also the type of belt can give you better performance.. I had T5 but now i'm working with GT2. Glasstype CO2 tubes can also be the cause: if the tube is not too stable anymore, than the cuttingperformance can be quite bad aswell..

Kees

Re: Which setting for best acrylic cut (less jagged corners)

PostPosted: Mon Jan 25, 2016 5:55 pm
by bloq
Hey,

i set the microstepping to 1/64 (this is the maximum my drives can deliver) but it had no effect. The cutout looks the same as before. I do not have any idea where to search :-(
Yes it is a glasstype co2 tube but it is pretty young. How can i see if it is not stable anymore? is there some kind of test? My belts on the x axis are gt2 and y still runs on mxl (will be converted soon)

thank you,

tm

Re: Which setting for best acrylic cut (less jagged corners)

PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2016 12:07 pm
by bloq
ok there is one thing i learned so far: My steppers are underpowered. The drivers were set to 0.6 A while the steppers can take up to 2.5 A. After increasing current on the drivers to 1.5 A the quality improved. I could not go further because this is what the drivers can deliver but maybe this can solve the problem. I am still not sure ..