Laser Cutter Committee Member Needed

Hello everyone,

I am trying to cut 1/4” MDF. The recommended thunder laser setting is 100% but I cannot go over 70% and it’s taking a VERY along time to cut my material. Is there any way a committee member can come today to allow me to cut at 100%? Here is my contact: 239 938 4427. Thanks!

@Team_Laser

To begin with, 1/4" MDF will be one of the slowest materials that we can still manage to cut. Just some perspective.

I could be mistaken here, but I believe the 70% limit is not a matter of committee policy, but because 70% of the power supply max current is equal to the max current of the laser tube. Anything higher will destroy the tube.

What laser are you using? There are a lot of other reasons it could be cutting slower than it should be.

Danny…are you a member? Have you take our Laser Basics training class?

@michaelb Okay, thanks for the info.
We are using the large thunder laser cutter.
What 1/4” material would you recommend for faster cutting?

@mblatz I am a member and my friend Juan Villa is cutting for me. He took the laser cutting class.

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Acrylic will likely cut faster. I’d expect the optics to be clean and aligned on big thunder but I know there’s been a lot of wood cut with it recently (which tends to dirty the optics faster). If no one else is able to look before I get in, I’ll check, but it’ll likely be after you’re finished.

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Have you considered multicam for this? Or laminated smaller materials?

If that’s the case the power supply needs adjusting. There’s a pot to control the max current limit.

The rdworks software limits the power to 70%. It’s to protect the tube.

If it was focused and aligned it would be fine for 1/4"

@MrsMoose
@lukeiamyourfather
Thanks for the replies, we will look into those materials. We chose MDF because of its tensile strength and acrylic is too expensive for our prototyping needs. For reference we are cutting:
MDF 1/4”
Speed: 16mm/s
Max Power: 70%
2 passes so it cuts all the way.
This might be a reasonable configuration, we just wanted to know if it could be improved.
Thanks again everyone!

What happens if you lower your speed? 5 or 10 usually gets it.

@agvet We tried 8mm/s and it requires 2 passes so we kept increasing speed. Anything faster than 16mm/s requieres 3 passes. And we didn’t want to use 5mm/s since it would’ve taken a very long time