Importance of CNC Repeatability
Let’s be honest, you can buy a CNC laser these days for a few thousand dollars, sure, it will have trouble cutting through 3 mm (1/8th inch) plywood and the precision will be lacking but this is what many CNC shops start off with. Not CNCROi.com, we went straight for the top of the line industrial wide-format Austrian CNC laser. Why? REPEATABILITY and ACCURACY.
As you saw in the above video, we cut the same design, a complex one at that with lots of lines, curves and generally, things that cause problems with lesser machines, without any issue. Let’s take a look at one of these a little closer. As to not repeat myself, you can see the black color changed version of this by visiting this page.
The optimal steps for CNC laser production is to engrave first, cut last. This makes sure that the entire piece is in one piece, and hence most stable, during the longest period of the production process. That’s also why you see the laser cutting out the inside parts before the outside. The longer this board stays in one piece, the better as it’s less prone to move around.
Why would stuff move around on our bed? It doesn’t happen often, but having a lot of air going around the piece above and below it does act like a small wind tunnel. This is a GOOD thing as it means that vapors which are a bigger issue, never have a chance to stick to the machine or the work piece. By having a consistent and strong airflow, we illiviate many of the problems that would occur if we didn’t take this approach.
After the engraving and outlining of the engraving using a faint cut line (doesn’t go through, just scores outlines), the cutting through process begins on the inside of this wood project. The reason you are seeing lots of staining on the piece now but not in the final photos is due to a mask we put over, this makes sure all stains occur on something removeable like tack paper rather than on the surface of the wood being engraved and cut.
The process is always the same, you can now start to see the wood sample showcasing our repeatability emmerging from the plywood. Regardless of the material we use, you’d get the same result, the only variance is material density, thickness and consistency which requite the laser to be optimized in other ways.
We are pretty close to the work, but we also have a far larger lens as well, if you need something engraved or cut that’s a lot thicker or uneven, that isn’t an issue for our Austrian wide-format industrial laser.
Now you see the power of masking, all of the stains you see, the work piece would be on the surface of the wood, this is gummy and very hard to remove. Using a mask means that all this stuff comes off with the mask, a far more efficient process.
Taking the mask off reveals the work we produced, we did this design across half a dozen different materials which I’ll show in later blog posts. This was mostly isolated with wood but this can just as easily have been acrylic, polycarbonate, foam, paper… basically anything but metal (for the cutting part).
The reason why we can’t cut metal in the shop using this laser is that it’s a completely different type of CNC machine, we do plan on getting one of course in due time to be able to produce anything on anything but until then, we get our blanks stamped or laser cut by an outside party. This would look awesome in stainless steel!
Comparing the masked vs unmasked, it’s like night and day. This looks awesome! What’s even better are the fine details in the leaves of the palm, they are sharp, and considering this is cheap plywood, pretty consistent! The engraving came out fantastic as did the cutting of the piece.
Taking a look more closely, you can see that there is some very slight staining, sometimes vapor does get under the mask especially with many fine cuts, but that’s easily sanded off. If we had the whole board to sand, that’s a completely different issue but spot touches are fine.
Are you looking for a custom CNC service provider that can make something fantastic for your company? Big or small, wood through rubber and plastics and metals… no problem. Contact CNCROi.com today!
