Fiber Lasers...

[Echd]

In a quest to make more cool stuff, I have headed down the path of a fiber laser. I will use this to supplement my woodworking by working with challenge coins, small thin cuts for inlays, and glass and acrylic. Their capabilities are impressive!

I know lightburn from prior laser use and I wanted a fiber laser. That is the purpose for the thread. I have already purchased one, and I did a fair bit of research before doing so. I have not received it yet. You'll get the warts and all review as I set it up and learn the capabilities. My experience with fiber laswrs is generalized but there isn't a ton of good info out there.

Most common fiber lasers that people like us may be interested in are 1064nm wavelength and are good for metals, some plastics, some acrylics, glass, stone, and the like. They are emphatically NOT for wood, which has a fair to middling chance of catching fire under the influence of a fiber laser.

A fiber laser is a rather different beast from a common diode laser like you may have seen or a common CO2 laser. Most fiber lasers are "Galvo" lasers, named for their galvanometers. They use a set of mirrors to "move" the laser beam around. The working area for the sort of fiber lasers in question here is quite small, but they work extremely fast. The working area is dictated by the lens you use, with a smaller lense allowing much more power to be brought to bear.

I ordered a 70x70 and 210x210mm lens. The 70x70 will be good for challenge coins, which are something I have received a lot of requests for. The 210x210 will be used for larger sheets being cut very finely, and for modification to gun frames. They also interface with "rotary" tools that incorporate a chuck and rotating axis powered by a stepper motor to do things like engrave designs on rings, tumblers, mugs, bracelets and the like.

I did a lot of price and comparison shopping. My conclusion was unless you have Trotec or greater money (starting 11-14k) you're getting a chinese laser. Make your peace with it. And the vast majority of the lasers are assembled from relatively generic parts other than the sources (sources being the box the laser issues from), which are made most commonly by JPT and Raycus.

Searching domestic sellers led me to Monport, Omtech, and Cloudray. There are many more, but those are the heaviest advertisers at present anyway. Their prices and accessories vary wildly, even for what appears to be about the same machine. I made some inquiries that led me to a company named "Hao Tian laser", which so far as I can discern is one of the OEM suppliers. I appreciated that their sales team was zero pressure, very helpful, and answered my questions. They spoke good English as well. Most other Chinese resellers of goods are pushy and annoying.

To place an order with "Hao Tian", you cannot do so from their warehouse or website directly. They use Alibaba (not aliexpress). When I decided on my desired machine (a 60 watt mopa laser by JPT, my lenses, my rotary, and some stencils for gun frames they threw in) they drew me up an invoice I paid through Alibaba. I also paid that through PayPal and used a credit card, so while I ate a CC processing fee, I am protected at multiple levels. My total cost including the CC fee was right at $4500.

I did find a coupon code on a website shortly after the fact and emailed them asking if I could use it (as when using invoices in alibaba it does not have a coupon window). They promptly paypalled me $100 back directly, which was pretty solid customer service. (Importation) taxes are included as well as shipping.

That is where I currently am. The order was placed on 10/30, and Alibaba claims it should be "dispatched" in 20 days. Most others I've spoken to state they got theirs in about 2 weeks, and the units are generally assembled at the time of the order.

I will update this on receipt and assembly and while I'm working on one or my rooms for this to go in you might be witness to a very stupid man operating an expensive laser on top of his ping pong table in the basement.

If anyone else has any experience with fiber lasers of this sort I'd be interested in hearing about it.

Personally I am just happy I will no longer need to strap guns to my cnc table to do my NFA engravings with a drag bit anymore!

ETA: updated 11/2 to note that my laser has already shipped. Hao Tian sent me pictures of the exact unit along with the calibrations for the individual lenses as well as my name on the label when they shipped.

 

[Echd]

Updating to report that I received UPS tracking and it is to be delivered on 11/6, which is pretty impressive for something I ordered that was assembled and calibrated in China in the space of a week.

I may not be able to get it running immediately due to my house being a wreck as I replace some floors, but I'll admit I'm looking forward to it quite a bit.

 

[greenhornWoodworker]

I'd suggest finding Facebook groups for info. There are plenty of groups with lots of info, and are active much like NCWW. Your mileage may vary in terms of responsiveness, as many people will expect you to have tried something on your own before asking for help, and want to know the specifics of software you use, settings, speeds, etc.

I did a lot of research into buying one of these as well, but the time investment and learning curve ultimately would not work out well for me considering the high cost of these things. Unless you have a market and solid business plan on what to do with it (which I did not), it may not make sense. Following to see how you do on this adventure. Good luck!

 

[Dee2]

Please add your experience to the Resource forum. TIA.

 

[Echd]

I will update as I assemble it and check it out.

Currently, it is held up in Worst Korea, which is no fault of the vendor, but that's just the nature of international shipping unfortunately.

 

[Echd]

Received it today. Order placed 10/30, dispatched 11/3, cleared customs 11/6, held ransom by UPS for about a week due to "severe weather events" in IL and NC that I guess I somehow overlooked. Crazy how often "severe weather" holds up UPS deliveries on perfectly nice days.

Either way, not bad. I am still not settled on where exactly to put it, but I'll try and get it unboxed and set up soon.

A quick unboxing.

The chinese crate it came in is sturdy. The entire package billed at 49kg, so a bit over 100 lbs.

When popping it open, you first get the plate that subtends the working area.

Under that is the actual laser source, controller, and scan head.

Under that, some boxes of accessories.

The accessories for me were my extra lens (210mm was installed, 70mm in the box), the rotary chuck (seriously hefty), Allen keys, some jig bars, a usb stick with some files, a pedal for repeated jobs, a USB cable, tooling for the chuck, and some laser glasses. It goes without saying but this laser vaporizes metals. Don't stare at it.

Last thing in the crate was the adjustment column you use to set the focus. This column is 50cm tall.

That will easily allow you to use 30x30cm lenses.

More to come, still have to find a place to set it up. It isn't a quiet unit but it needs to be tethered to a computer, and given that it's all in with the other tooling a $5000 machine, it's going to stay indoors in the climate control.

 

[Echd]

By no means have I had the chance to become proficient, but I have had a good deal of fun with the little time I've had to play with it so far.

Compared to a co2 and diode laser, which are relatively simple (you vary speed and power) there are many, many more variables with this variety of laser. As a MOPA variant as opposed to Q-switched, you also can alter pulse length, which I have quickly found makes a big difference in output. I've found myself easily able to cut thin stock which I've seen youtubers have some difficulty with on more conventional 50w q switched raycus lasers.

So for a fiber laser, you can alter speed, power, frequency, pulse width. The trade off in a galvo vs a gantry laser is massively faster speed vs larger area of coverage. On my 24w diode on my CNC, I can cover 48x33". On this with my largest lens I can cover about 12x12". Now on the other hand, how often do you even need that kind of coverage for metal marking? Not often.

Also, ensure you use fume extraction for these. I'm running an inline blower fan into a filter and also running an air purifier in the room. I intend to also fab a hookup and quick bracket that can just slide into an openwindow for ventilation, I just haven't gotten that far yet.

As a side note, wider lenses are far more forgiving with regards to focus length than narrow band lenses. The difference between no noticeable removal and all and "plasma cutter" with my 70mm lens is literally just a few millimeters. With the 210mm lens (which I am viewing as my general purpose lens) you have several millimeters of leeway.

One of my first misadventures was discovering the joys of stainless steel marking. Lightburn can generate excellent test grids to vary whatever features you may want to test. This one was done at far too much power, but you can see at one point in the test between q-pulse and interval I was able to get some colors- reds, blues, and greens. The next steps are to narrow that range of settings and then search even more in detail.

Incidentally and speaking of too much power, introducing too much power to a workpiece will cause it to bend.

Making a stout piece of stainless bend like this gives an idea of exactly how much juice this is putting out, and it is definitely not a toy.

One of the more practical uses for a laser marker like this is obliterating masking agents to give a photographic look. On glass, acrylics, painted tile, slate, and metals this can be a striking look. Here is an example of one doodle on a coated aluminum business card.

Goofy, but absolutely mesmerizing to watch. This was done at 10% power and 7000 millimeters per second speed. That is to say, pretty darn fast. Watching an image suddenly materialize like that is a very science fiction moment for sure.

As for cutting power, it's important to emphasize that these are not cutting machines... but they can do it in thin stock, and with very fine detail, if needed. The above surfing border collie is drawn on 0.5mm aluminum stock. That's sufficient to make fun metal stickers or the like. I am able to cut that material cleanly in 2 passes at 20khz, 90% power, 100mm per second speed, and 400 q pulse using a fairly wide angle lens (so not a highest power scenario).

One test (and probably not a wise one as I'm pretty sure zinc dust is fairly toxic) was to use it on pennies. A common industrial usage for fiber lasers is cleaning metal, particularly from rust. I went and raided the coin jar for nasty, grody, patina covered pennies. At very lower power and high speeds it would clean them quickly. It could be extremely beneficial for restoring metal parts with minimal material removal.

It also can cut pennies in half, which i found amusing if not useless.

While I am just scratching the surface with this tool and not set up as well as I would like yet (you might notice it's literally sitting on the floor of a room that doesn't even have baseboards yet) there are endless possibilities for this. Keepsakes, and engravings are very obvious, but being able to add accents to small metal pieces will really set off certain things I think.

 

[DSWalker]

I know nothing about lasers but found your post very interesting. Pretty cool "toy" (that is what my wife calls any new tool I get).

Your stats on how quick it cut the border collie weren't relatable to me. How long did it actually take to make that?

What is the prep time involved with the software to set up before you begin cutting/printing etc?

I've ordered a few things recently that came directly from China and they took 3 to 4 weeks. I'm impressed on how quickly yours arrived!

 

[Echd]

It can be pretty fast or slower depending on parameters. Here's a true speed example I made a second ago (the stock used is the size of a business card). Forgive the shakiness as I just used my phone braced against my leg.

While the coloration has considerable room for improvement, its really just a test of concept.

As you determine the parameters for fineness and coarseness your desired settings can vary it greatly. In this case the "laser spot" size is about 0.08mm, and it's drawing a line every 0.05mm. Using the parameters I drew in lightburn, in this video it "drew" approximately 1750 "lines" to create this image.

Now, translating an image is generally slow, as the laser is traversing the entire area of its effect. Preferentially we would use a vector graphic and selectively fill or avoid filling parts. That means that in most professional usages (text, logos, etc) it is actually considerably faster than in creating imagery.

Setup time to usage was short. I am fairly well acquainted with lightburn, the software I use. Ezcad2 is a free option which I understand to be sort of a pain in the butt. It was included but i have never used it. By the time I had it plugged in and assembled, I installed the drivers on my computer (took seconds), installed the supplied configuration files for the laser (took seconds) and then I was ready to rock. Lightburn is quite user friendly. Galvo lasers in general are pretty user friendly- they even trace the part you're going to lase with a red laser before you start so you can set things up.

Here is a better example of a much more practical project. I'm sure many of us here can think of how to use something in this manner... and it also shows the red alignment laser.

 

[DSWalker]

Wow, pretty cool!

 

[Echd]

Here's another neat party trick, although it's actually pretty useful.

One of the common industrial uses for fiber lasers is rust cleaning and removal. In industry they use a handheld gun, think Ghostbusters.

Here's an old, old plane someone gave me.

It's in awful shape. Here's the blade.

Here's the blade after about 15 seconds on the laser.

It might still be pitted, but it sure isn't rusty any more.

The plane body is an even crazier result.

Yep, that's just the powdered rust. Knocked off and sitting there. It can now be brushed off with your finger.

Also, you know what's crazy? I've never posted a YouTube video before, and now that short video of the state being cut out has almost 2000 views.

So, while I can't recommend buying one of these to clean up the sorts of planes people pay $5 for to decorate with... smoke em if you got em, I suppose.

So, I know said this would be a warts and all review... but there really weren't any warts. Haotian shipped my laser fast and at the best price around. I got it quickly and it was packed great. Setup was super easy and it works perfectly as they precalibrated the lenses. There seriously wasn't a single hitch with the process. Everything works, and works as it should. I'm not a newbie to lasers but this is my first fiber laser and I found it to be a very simple and intuitive experience.

 

[Echd]

A few odds and ends.

Applying a fake Damascus pattern to a broken knife I reprofiled and fixed. I also engraved the owner's name along the spine.

Multicolor engraving on stainless steel- quite time consuming but very cool. Makes for business cards with a very high wow factor. However the time to color engrave is quite long- this one side of a business card too 15 minutes. I haven't quite landed on a good white mark for stainless yet...

Some stainless tumblers. The nice thing about this laser type is that within reason, you dont even need to hook up and calibrate the rotary tool. With a wide lens you have enough focal distance that you can just engrave on a curved surface. These tumblers took literally seconds to do.

 

[Warped Woodwerks]

Is that all it can do? I was expecting a little more, especially for the price tag.

I'm kidding, btw..

Great write-up and a lot of possibilities!! It looks like you have been having a lot of fun with your fiber laser.

I have come across a few tumbler videos, recently, and I can't believe some of the prices people are paying for those.

I've seen a few sites selling tumblers for $130+. To me.. that is just crazy, but if they are getting that.. wow!

It looks like it has been a good investment and a great way to bring in money.

Enjoy!

 

[Wilsoncb]

Thanks for the write up. I’m familiar with industrial fiber lasers used for cutting sheet metal parts (as opposed to punching them). Those machines typically move the sheet vs the laser head. The head is also very close to the material. The head on your machine appears to be a few inches off the material. I was wondering if the head moves on an XY axis or if it has a single pivot point (kind a like a ball or mount)? Also you said you didn’t need to use the rotary tool to do the tumblers. That makes me think the distance between the head and material is somewhat forgiving?

Oh, Merry Christmas…don’t shoot your eye out with that thing!

 

[Echd]

You can move the head along the y axis but you do so manually. You loosen the bolts holding the scanning head to the lifting column and you can slide it in and out. It isnt normally necessary to move it, though.The head is lifted by means of a manual crank on the z column.

The laser is moved by two small and very fast moving mirrors inside of the head. The focal distance is much longer than with the gantry style machines, with a resulting much lower level of cutting ability compared to a gantry fiber used for industrial purposes. The lens you use sets the focal distance. I believe with the lens for a 70x70mm workspace the relief is about 120mm, for the 210x210mm lens it is around 290mm. The wider the work area a lens provides, the more forgiving the focal distance, but the larger the spot size of the laser and the lower the overall power delivered. So a 50x50mm lens would have a very short focal distance and very unforgiving working distance, but the most cutting power by a wide margin. However even with a wide lens the spot size is still quite tiny.

The fake damasteel knife was quite a hit for christmas.

 

[kserdar]

Will it cut 1.2mm silver, copper or brass?

 

[Echd]

Silver and brass shouldn't be a problem, although it's not going to be a superfast process. The big problem with cutting with this style of laser is unless you can do it in very few passes, the material may heat and warp, which would move the cut lines. These machines are used for jewelry manufacturing sometimes and people doing that use a clamping jig to hold their thin stock stable. You could either use a very short focal length lens and manually adjust the focus as you cut or take it slower with a wider area lens. You can also add wobble to the beam path to widen the cut slightly and reduce the chances of welding the beam path shut. Additionally, air assist can help here (as it down with other laser types). It assists in the same way as it does with other lasers.

Cutting a 1.5mm penny in half doesn't take very long at all. But that's zinc, which melts around 800F. Common brass is around 1700F melting point and silver is ever so slightly more.

Copper is highly reflective so I'm not sure. I don't think I have cut solid copper yet.

I watched a guy livestream himself relieving a red dot cut into a pistol slide once. It took hours, although that was removing probably around an ounce of hardened steel.

 

[Echd]

Today's experiment was ceramic tile.

Ceramic tile engraves readily, deeply, and quickly. I was surprised how quickly material could be ablated! What was more complex was trying to burn color into the relieved material. That had some variable success, but in the end as I pressed further the heat led to the tile cracking a bit. It also takes a very long time, whereas the engraving is fast and efficient. It would probably be best to just engrave it and flood it with a washable paint.

I tried doing photographic engraving where you coat the tile and then burn it. I used white spray paint and my results were uniformly terrible. I tried black spray paint and it was also awful. Many recommend a mix of titanium dioxide (essentially the most common pigment used for making everything and anything white) and alcohol sprayed or brushed onto the tile. Check back in about a week and I'll have some TiO2 in hand to give it a shot.

On the plus side 4x4 and 6x6 tiles are dirt cheap, so if a workable product can result from this, it could be quite cost effective.

 

[Echd]

Considerable practice with tiles has led me to just stick with doing laser etching on tiles with a diode. For whatever reason, my results are just uniformly better with much less effort. While the diode cannot cut ceramic or etch it directly, when doing photo engraves it seems to navigate using titanium dioxide on tiles much more readily. It doesn't take long to do on a diode either. Oh well, I still learned something, just not with this.

I have turned my attention back to challenge coins of late. This has become a battle for aesthetics in my mind. Burnished vs polished? Worn vs clean?

These will be contributions to an auction for a law enforcement charity. They have also shown me the need for a lightbox, as I don't typically photograph shiny things.

The upshot of this type of production is ability to make variations easily. Most challenge coins are stamped using pot metal. This is cut brass, and each coin has variations in design as well as a series number. While I would never want to do a 500 coin run like someone with a stamping machine might, these can be done in about 10-15 minutes each, and it's hands off other than flipping the coins over.

To me it looks neat to have multiple heights in a piece. It can be done using a height map derived from grayscale images (or converted stls or objs) but doing so in that manner takes considerable time- I did the last coin that way and while the detail is cool, just one side took 2 hours. It's dirty and had brasso in the nooks, I'd clean something like that in a wet tumbler for sure.