Laser Cutters

I've ordered a Creality 10W Falcon,  £189,  & its actually been dispatched which is a few steps better than Atomstack.
I've been on the Facebook page but its almost entirely engraving apart from people not being able to get things to work.

I've been trying to find a Cutting Test which has proved more difficult than I expected. I've resorted to doing an array of 10mm squares on Librecad & exporting it as an svg file then loading it into LaserGRBL. This has a setting for speed & power but it only sets them to one value for all of the file. I've saved it as a g-code file & can edit the S & F values in Notepad but its a bit of a chore.

Putting text into it is also not as straightforward as in Freecad. I've generated an svg file with text in it online but changing the text height is a problem. I haven't found a way to do it yet, the online text to svg converters I've tried so far all just give a fixed height.

   

The machine arrived a couple of days ago, so well packaged it took some getting out of the polystyrene!The instructions were reasonable but the illustrations were so small I found some details difficult to see.It went together well, my only doubt was whether the cross rail was square to the sides but after a bit of measurement & jiggery-pokery it looked OK.

I'd dug a 600mm square ceramic tile out of the loft to put it on but it was too big for the computer room bench so I set it up in the utility room along with an old Windows 7 computer. I'd 3D printed some stops to locate it on the tile & some spacers to locate the honeycomb against the frame of the cutter.
I spent several hours trying to get the computer to connect to the cutter but then discovered my USB-C cable was only for charging. I managed to borrow a signal one & after that just had to load the driver off the TF card that came with the machine & set the baudrate & it was up & away.
LaserGRBL has softkeys for jogging, homeing, feedhold & cycle start & abort which worked well.

I had written a program for a 10 x 10 test array of squares with feeds of 1000 to 10000 mm/min & S values of 100 to 1000 & tried it on a 2.5mm thick 150 x 150mm square of basswood that came with the machine. The program worked but those values only engraved the wood.
So I made up a 4 x 4 array with feeds from 800 to 200 in steps of 200 & S-values from 600 to 900 in steps of 100 & ran it on the other square.
This cut 9 of the 16 squares with only 3 showing slightly on the back & negligible scorching on the hottest one.
I've now got some idea of the settings for balsa so that''s the next step.

I had 3D'd some pegs to hold the material onto the honeycomb. The squares were slightly bowed to start with & after the cutting, the corner at the hottest corner wa raised by about 20mm so they are necessary.
 
 

Great stuff Magpie, I'd like a link to the machine vendor.

uk.crealityfalcon.com/products/cr-laser-...aver-10w-low-wattage

Hi Magpie, can you give me an estimate of the package size and weight? The local robbers want 500quid for the same thing!
I have an address at 'Forward to me' I'm sure they can ship for less than 300quid

The machine itself is 3.2KG according to the spec.
The box etc must weigh less than 1KG and measures 600 x 280 x 200.

There's some on Aliexpress, the postage on there to where you are I would expect to be less but you've got to make sure what you're ordering is what you think you're ordering.
The basic machine comes in three power ratings, 5W 10W 20W, the blurb often states 10 or 20W but displays the price for the 5W, you've got to at least triple check that.

I bought a 400 x 400 honeycomb on the basis of the cutting capacity but now I think a 500 x 500 one would be better. I think it would fit snugly inside the four corner supports but i would need to check that.

They want 400quid for shipping1

Looks like your Sis will be getting another mystery parcel!  

I had a play around with the S & F values on a piece of scrap 5mm balsa & got a decent cut with S500 & F500 so I bit the bullet & cut the root ribs in 5mm balsa. This must have been a slightly different grade from the scrap as it cut slightly shallower, but still acceptable.

The laser cut parts I got in the VMC kits had break tabs in so I incorporated them but at least in this 5mm balsa they weren't needed, the Model Barn's kits didn't have them - my cuts were similar to his (though not as scorched) so maybe it depends on the thickness of the material.

One little funny with the LbreCad-SVG- LaserGRBL process, it picked up the the construction points for the ellipse I used & was going to cut them. 
 
 

Hmm, 'Forwardtome' want 120quid for carriage, the there's still local customs.

Local Customs  the ones that charge for importing, or the ones with sticky fingers? 

With the advent of smart phones the skimmers are being very careful, even so I would have te pay 10% of the estimated value, in cash, at the local Post Office.