6mm Plywood, cutting problems on Epilog 40 watt Zing.

[Steve Kelsey]

Steve, thanks for the reply, what are your other settings ie: DPI and frequency?

12s/100p/500f are the settings I use for vectoring.

[Neal Schlee]

Hi Guys,
I have bought some very good quality 6mm Birch plywood, but am having great difficulty cutting it, I have used the Epilog setting of 20% speed, 100% power and 500HZ frequency, this setting takes three passes to cut and the wood is very charred and burnt, I have tried my own settings but to no avail.

After trying many settings I am down to 10% speed 100% power and can do it in two passes but the charring is still very bad.
Any help would be appreciated.

Regards
Peter

Some high quality european birch ply (EuroBirch) is made with a phenolic based adhesive (an exterior water proof glue) and does not laser cut well where as Russian Baltic Birch uses an interior type adhesive and cuts well.

[Peter Berry]

Thanks Neal and everyone else for their help, I have given up now, I can cut 8mm MDF like a "knife through butter", but not this particular plywood, I have tried multiple passes and many settings but the edge is still charcoal.

[Michael Kowalczyk]

Most likely it is exterior glue being used or it could be a Chinese version that uses Poplar for the core. True Baltic Birch will cut clean and have brownish edges. Once in a while you will get a black poof of smoke and it won't cut all the way through... It seems, in my opinion, that they (the russians) are stacking the center core with less than BB grade and they are a little more prevalent in knots than normal. OK for CNC and mechanical cutting but not as nice for laser when cutting lots of small items.

[brian saban]

I always heard running at 100% power is bad for the laser and eats up the tube very quickly. Any truth to that?

[Keith Winter]

Trotec recommends 80w for 1/2, other posters are correct that's too thick for the wattage.

[Craig Matheny]

Most likley it is true I replace my tubes about every three years 40 and 60 watt epilog run 8 hours a day 6 days a week so about 7200 hours of run time. just warrentied out my last tube i just got 1y 9 m. old