Laser cutting tips: Introduction

Hi everyone!
Today I would like to talk about the laser engraving/cutting technique.
At my workplace I use a 60W CO2 laser cutter. The machine can cut and engrave a lot of materials, but you must know how to set-up the parameters and how every material react to the laser beam.
Our laser cutter has two parameters for the cutting technique: speed and power.
The speed says how fast the laser will move, the faster it goes the less time it will burn the surface of the material, higher speed means less working time but also less burnt and precision. If you set the speed too high it may not cut some of the details or it won’t cut through the material. Anyway if you set the speed too low it will take a lot of time to complete the cut and could possibly burn some details or even set the material on fire. The best work to do is to test a little bit of material before the final cut. The parameters for every material depends on the power of the laser tube (wattage), the type of material, the thickness of the material and the process you need to do.
A laser cutter can do at least 3 distinct process:

1. Cut – the laser will cut through all the material, literally cutting off the pieces you need
2. Vector engrave – the laser will cut some of the material, engraving a thin line following a vector
3. Raster engrave – the laser will engrave an area, by passing repeatedly like an inkjet printer
   Of the 3 processes the most time consuming is the raster engrave, the laser need to do several passages with low gap between each scan. However with this process you can obtain some relay cool effects, like engraving a logo on glass, marble or stone.

Next time I will give you some tips about the different materials you can use with a laser cutter