Air Assist marring wood surface - can I leave it off?

[Steve Garber]

Hi guys,

Here are two pictures of circles I cut using no air assist (first pic) and air assist (second pic) with the same settings otherwise.

With air assist, I get a lot more "burn marks". I can turn down the laser, but then I don't get as nice of a deep line... these were done with 35% power, 100% speed and 1000 Freq (although I'm not sure that last has any effect when vector cutting?).

Anyway, I LOVE the results without the air assist. I wanted to ask if some of you leave air assist off when doing etching in wood, even though these are vector lines, and if you have any advice about this. The second result is unfortunately not really suitable for me to use.

Thanks very much!
Steve Garber

Circles_NoAir.jpgCircles_AirAssist.jpg

[Kev Williams]

You can leave it off, it's not a 'requirement' for the laser to work.

My suggestion would be to turn the pressure down to where it's just barely a breeze, if only to move the smoke away from the lens quicker. The lens loading up with soot is about the only negative (imo) to not using air assist...

BTW, take some denatured alcohol and a clean cloth to that guck, most of it should come off, any that doesn't you can likely remove with some 400 or finer sandpaper...

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[Makrel Johnson]

Hi guys,
With air assist, I get a lot more "burn marks". I can turn down the laser, but then I don't get as nice of a deep line... these were done with 35% power, 100% speed and 1000 Freq (although I'm not sure that last has any effect when vector cutting?).

I've only seen this without air-assist - but venturing a guess here... how high of a psi is your air assist set to?

It looks like it's set high enough to blast the residue right back onto the surface.
Is it just on wood you see this, or do you see this behavior on other substrates?

-Mak

[Keith Winter]

What type of laser do you have doing this?

[Lee DeRaud]

It almost looks like all the air assist is doing is providing more oxygen to keep the wood burning in the cut-line.

[Dave Sheldrake]

Air assist isn't designed to be used on engraving or vector lining unless it is going right through the workpiece.

It's use as a flame retarder is secondary to the design use of extending the kerf via laminar flow into it.

[Mike Null]

I would turn off air assist. I use mineral spirits or diluted pine-sol type cleaners for clean-up.

[David Somers]

When I buy larger sheet stock I generally spray it with lacquer or clear shellac using an HVLP sprayer before I store it. Then when I run it through the laser to engrave or cut any soot wipes off with simply a damp cloth. Probably overkill on my part. I should really take some time to compare, but it has made cleanup fast and easy without using anything but damp cloth.

[Bill George]

Just wondering what machine you have? On some Chinese machines the cone is not designed to be removed and the air cools the optics.