After 2 months of hard but intermittent work on filters/cabinet/ground line,etc, my 50w beast is working like a charm just out of the box.
Now it is time to experiment and it seems I need a lot of time!
Every type of material is really different from other and the same is true for the same material from different sources (i.e. PLY, or MDF where the glue used means a very different behaviour from one to other).
The 50W china laser is very common and some trusted company has some parameters around (go to thunder laser and check), but every number must be tried and tried again, so maybe a thread with RELIABLE parameters (still every machne could behave differently due to mW setting of the PSU) could be useful.
At this time I found that:
3mm ACRILIC trasparent dark green get a good engrave with 180-250 speed and 20-30 POWER, cut easily and fast with a speed of 14 and a power of 60 (I try to use the minimum power to save the tube life)
3mm poplar PLY engrave fast and light with speed 350 and power 20, engrave deeper and darker (of course) at 200 and 20, cut easily at 25 speed and 60 power
3mm MDF engrave the same at 180-30 and at 250 20 (don't ask me why, I am still investigating...) and cut at 10 speed and 60 power (this is the bare minimum, and need to push the piece out by hand)
Hope this could help newbies like me around and hope this data could be updated by everyone and newparameters for other materials added.
Enjoy your laser, it is really a new world! :wee: