Minimum Velocity

[mikegrundvig]

How many inches per minute of travel speed we should be shooting for to have lots of engraving flexibility? I'm trying to plan out my exact drive train and I need to know what I should be shooting for in the system. I'm planning on a 100w or 120w tube, so I believe I need some serious velocity if I want to engrave well. Thanks!

-Mike

[lasersafe1]

I do some engraving at 800mm/sec with 30W, This is 31"/sec or 1860"/min. Since a high power tube will be difficult to turn down accurately below (20W?), then I would shoot for this or faster if you can get it. You might want to be thinking servos since steppers will reach a speed-torque limit long before a servo would. Somewhere above this 1860"/min value you are going to reach a limit of tube response time, but I have never bothered to calculate where it would occur. I do know that those commercial engravers haul ass, but they use rf lasers with a quicker response time.

[mikegrundvig]

Excellent, thanks! I was planning on using servos already but I needed to know what target velocity to shoot for to handle the gearing. Looks like 2000 in/min is what I'll target. It sounds super fast, but the servos will still be geared down a bit to get there.

-Mike