A Guide to Buy Your First CO2 Laser Machine

CO2 laser machine is also known as CO2 laser engraving and cutting machine, CO2 laser engraver, CO2 laser cutter, CO2 laser enrgaving machine, CO2 laser cutting machine, In this article, we will provide a brief buyer's guide to the CO2 laser engraving and cutting machine.

Purchasing of a laser machine should be careful and conscious. Failed investment in wrong equipment may adversely affect the successful development of your business.

In general, we set goals as following:

1. To raise the customers' level of knowledge and requirements of choosing the laser equipment.

2. To reveal the design features of some machines, which are mostly hidden by sellers.

3. To increase general level of laser culture among laser machines users.

4. Guide to buy a high quality machine.

The working principle of CO2 laser machine:

CO2 laser engraving and cutting machine generates laser beam by laser tube. Through three mirrors and a focus lens, the laser is finally focused on the material and two movable axes position the laser beam on the workpiece. The surface of the material is subject to strong thermal energy and the temperature increases rapidly. This point rapidly melts or vaporizes due to high temperature, and the laser trajectory is used to achieve the purpose of processing.

What materials can CO2 laser machine process?

Acrylic

MDF

Wood

PVC

Color-board

Rubber

Leather

Cottom

Paper

Plastic

ABS bord

Paper board

What industries can CO2 laser machine be applied in?

1. Printing and packaging industry

2. Craft gift industry

3. Advertising industry

4. Leather garment industry

5. Model industry

6. Stone (tombstone) industry

7. Studio industry

The main parts of CO2 laser machine:

I. Optical system

1. Laser tube

2. Mirror

3. Focusing mirror

4. Aluminum ring

5. Red light pointer

II. Power system

1. Laser power supply

2. Switching power supply

3. Stepper motor and driver

4. Guide

5. Belt transmission system (Screw transmission system for optional)

6. Synchronous wheel

III. Control system

1. Ruida RD6442S control system

2. Support CorelDraw, Photoshop, AutoCAD, Illustrator, InkScape, etc.

IV. Work table

Common working table include: Up-down table, Knife table, Honeycomb table

Unusual working table include: Globular table, Hydraulic up-down table, Mountain type table

1. Up-down table: Mainly used for cutting and engraving thick materials

2. Knife table: It can be used for engraving and cutting hard materials.

3. Honeycomb table: Mainly used for relatively soft materials, such as leather, fabrics, etc.

V. Peripheral equipment

1. Cooling system

Pump: Directly in the bucket, used for low configuration machine.

Water chiller : Cooling the laser tube provides a stable operating environment for the laser tube.

2. Exhaust fan: Eliminate smoke.

3. Air compressor and Air pump: The function is to cool the material and the lens.

How does a CO2 laser machine work?

Attached to your computer just like a printer, the laser engraving machine will cut designs you create in most graphic software programs. Set up your page size to the size of the piece you are engraving, create your image, and print it to the laser - it will even cut many of the materials with the same system.

The best way to describe how our lasers work is to compare the system to your printer. Using similar technology, we take the images you typically print to paper, but instead we fire a CO2 laser beam that engraves and cuts your design on a wide variety of materials.

How to make an image to laser engraving and cutting?

1. Start by scanning or importing your image.

2. Import your image into CorelDRAW or a similar design program. Set your page size to the size of the piece you are engraving.

3. Convert the photo to grayscale. Since we are engraving on anodized aluminum for this example, we have inverted the image.

4. Configure the laser's speed and power, using the suggested settings in the owner's manual, then send the print job to the laser system for engraving.

5. Complete by choosing your print job from the laser menu and pushing the go button for engraving to begin.

6. Your work is done! With these few, simple steps, you have created a stunning engraving that will last a lifetime.

What are the different types of CO2 laser machine?

According to different laser powers, the CO2 laser machine have 40w 60w 80w 100w 130w and 150w

According to different working sizes, there are have : 600*400mm 600*900mm 1300*900mm 1300*1800mm 1300*2500mm 1400*1000mm, 1600*1000mm. According to customer demand, other sizes can be customized.

How much does a CO2 laser machine cost?

How to buy an affordable CO2 laser machine within your budget?

The CO2 laser machine cost is closely related with its configuration. Although the machine appearance sometimes you feel you see Is almost the same, the realization of the function is the same of (cutting, plane engraving, relief and so on), but according to the different configurations, its price, processing speed, machine service life will be different.

Before you purchase, there are several items you have to confirm:

1. Learn about what material you wants to process by the machine. Non-metalic material usually requires machine, but metal sheet cutting work requires fiber laser cutting machine.

2. Select the appropriate machine working size according to the size of the product to be processed. However, it should be noted that the large working size of the machine is not necessarily good.Because machines with large working sizes are expensive, while some machines with poor quality have unstable laser output at various points on large-format surfaces, resulting in different shades of engraving products on the same table, so choosing the right working size is very important.

3. Check the type of work you want to use the machine for. If you process column material, such as glass cup, bottles, bamboo, egg, you have to requires the machine fits rotary device( rotary attachment) and moving table. The rotary devices are different for holding bottles and egg, so do remember list what type of work you do. Laser machines are designed for different applications, such as CO2 laser fabric cutting machine, CO2 laser stone engraver, CO2 laser sign engraver, even CO2 laser label cutter. CO2 laser fabric cutter requires special working table and support to hold fabrics rollers, marble processing requires rolling table for lifting and moving easily, label cutting requires a scanner which could scan the edge of label to guide the laser head to cut. If this is something you want to invest in, buy a machine that can do that.

4. Check laser tube power you want. Wood cutting and paper cutting requires different laser tube power, cutting thickness also requires different power, so this is the important element you should consider too.

If your work is mainly engraving, the 40w, 60w, or 80w laser power is a good choice.

If your work is engraving and cutting, here is a form about cutting different thicknesses of materials with different laser power:

Max cutting thickness(mm)	40W	60W	80W	100W	130W	150W
Acrylic	3	8	12	15	20	30
MDF	2	4	7	9	13	20
Wood	3	5	8	10	15	20
PVC	2	4	7	9	13	18
Color-board	2	3	6	8	12	18
Rubber	2	4	7	8	9	10
Leather	1	4	8	10	13	15
Cotton	3	6	12	15	20	25
Paper	3	4	8 (About 30 pcs)	10	12	15
Plastic	1	4	7	10	10	10
ABS bord	3	8	12	15	20	25
Paper board	2	5	6	8	12	18

5. After-sales service of machinery is also very important, but people often fall into a wrong myth. They do not know that machinery of good quality are not easy to damage, so there is no need for frequent maintenance, but it is a machine with poor quality. Frequent damage requires special attention to this point. After-sales service has a direct impact on the production efficiency. If a machine that has been purchased fails to solve the problem, it will directly cause production to stop and cannot work. Therefore, after-sales service is very important. Therefore, when customers choose laser engraving machine products, they must actively understand the market, analyze the market, analyze which manufacturers produce better machines, the credibility is guaranteed, and which manufacturers have relatively good machine quality and better engraving effects. The information must take time to know.

6. Cooling system of the laser tube: the steady operation of the laser machine is largely dependent on the cooling system of the glass laser tube. Any problems with the cooling system may cause the laser tube failure. Therefore the laser machine has to be equipped with a water-cooling unit or chiller to cool the laser tube. The chiller keeps the water temperature at the given level. Freon gas which does not destroy the ozone layer is used as the refrigerant. The chiller provides the steady operation of the laser tube. If you buy a laser machine with the cooling system which consists of a plastic tank and an aquarium compressor, we think that the supplier has disrespected you.

The chiller must properly fit the laser machine and conform to power of the installed laser tube. Sometimes Some suppliers deliberately install the chiller which does not meet the requirements for cooling the laser tube.

The cooling circuit of laser machine must be equipped with the water flow sensor as the additional protection of the water cooled laser tube. In case if the sensor detects the lack of flow or poor water circulation, the laser machine will power off the laser tube automatically thus protect it from damages and save your money and time.

The lack of protection for the laser optical path against dirt and dust contamination in the laser tube.

There is no built-in laser tube protection against dirt and dust contamination at the outlet of laser tube in the some laser machines that causes fast failure of laser tube and decreases laser power during operation.

7. CO2 laser engraving and cutting quality mainly depends on the quality of the built in the laser optical path mirrors and focus lenses as well as the type of coating laid on the optical elements. As a general the laser optical path consists of 3 mirrors and 1 focus lens which sequentially transmit the laser beam at an angle of 90 degree from the laser tube to working area and a focus lens built in the laser carriage to converge the laser beam at the spot on the working area.

The special coating laid on the mirrors of optical system enhances the laser beam reflection rate. Economy class mirrors are installed in the laser machines. The coating laid on this mirror burns and fails quickly. The rate of laser power loss is high from the economy class mirror. As a result of such economy the laser beam loses significant amount of laser power before to converge at the working area. The percentage of laser power loss in the optical path reaches 20-50%.

The focus lens is the major part of laser optical system. Focus lenses are made of zinc selenide which has highest transmission ratio of laser beam. The special coating or plating on the focus lens minimizes the laser beam refraction coefficient on the lens surface and increases the capacity of laser beam through a lens. The installation of economy class focus lens in some laser machines causes distortion of laser beam, large loss of laser power in the working area and as a result poor quality of cutting and engraving.

WHY CHOOSE STYLECNC?

High Quality

Starting with purchase the original part of the machine, then production and installation of machinery. Finally, the complete CO2 laser machine will be tested to make sure they can work very well before being out of factory. In each process we pass strict quality checks to ensure that the machine is of high quality.

Affordable Price

Some customers are seeking cheap psychologic,before they place order,they do comparison just based on price and don’t care about quality, the results is obviously to be cheated and get some bad quality machine or machines that can’t do their works.

Please remember that no one do lose money trading.

We specify the price of the machine according to the quality of the machine and market conditions. Maybe our CO2 laser machine price not low, so if customers who only care about price,please go to other suppliers directly, we don’t do bad quality machine.

Any customer who choose us finally,will never get disappoint,we believe that you will come again after first deal.

Excellent After-Sales Service

STYLECNC has a professional technical team. Our engineer is professional on many issues, so if you have any problem about machine, our engineer will know why the problem happen, and tell you the solution. We offer 24 hours of online remote guide. If the remote guide online does not solve all the problems, our engineer can go to your place to solve problems.

If you have an idea to buy a CO2 laser engraving and cutting machine, please review the items listed below:

CO2 Laser Engraving Machine

CO2 Laser Cutting Machine

Mixed Laser Cutting Machine