EECS Section

Characterizing the laser cutter

Laser Cutting

We started by characterizing how the relative power settings on the Universal laser cutter affects the three main laser cutting operations, raster engraving, vector engraving and vector cutting.
We did this by means of creating test tokens which had all three elements. In order to make it easier, we engraved the relative laser power on the tokens. Hence, -40% refers to -40% setting (relative to the default ULS Matboard laser settings) for rastering, engraving and cutting. The following images also show how the kerf is affected by the realtive laser power. As the setting is increased we see that the size of the square (which was set to 1 inch in the software) tends to decrease. This is probably because the increased power burns through more of the stock

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