CylonSexFiend wrote:Another great aspect of the laser is that most of them can be set to variable depth so say you are cutting .9mm 3CR13MoV you can set up your program to also cut .07mm engraving into the piece at the same time.
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I realize I'm way late to the party, but for posterity, here's a bit of information:
In order to engrave with a Laser, you're not setting the machine up to cut 0.07mm, you're actually leaving the machine to cut at the same depth and then altering the emission power. You
could alter the cut height, but you also run the risk of Raleigh scattering causing all sorts of damage... like loss of sight, sunburns -> cancer, equipment damage, etc.
Also, I'd like to point out that setting the machine to cut 0.07mm material when 0.9mm is on the table would cause the head to crash. If you were to do it that way, you would actually need to know the focal length of the lens you're using and then set that to 0.07mm below the surface.
Now days there's enough information on CNC machines, you can literally build two of your own for the price it would cost to buy one (Milling, lathe, plasma). The one caveat to this are Laser machines as they require far more equipment to assemble and additional experience to maintain. Thankfully, though, technology has gotten to the point where power isn't nearly an issue. At the time of this posting, Kerns manufactures an 150W table that'll cut 100 3.175mm holes in 88 seconds, which is amazingly fast. (I learned to run on a 2000W machine capable of cutting 13mm with water cooling 20 years ago).
Just food for thought.