Hello. Could you provide some insight about choosing a laser?
I'd like to buy a CNC3018 Pro machine off eBay primarily for light milling. I would also like to purchase a laser with it and ultimately be able to burn images such as portrait photos into wood materials.
With the machine I can choose either a 0.5W laser, or a 2.5W or 5.5W.
I am tossing up between purchasing either the 2.5W or the 5.5W.
I am leaning towards the 5.5W laser, would this be overkill for my application? I see that I can adjust the minimum and maximum power output via software. With a 5.5W, whether I have to adjust the power output or not, would I be able to achieve very light tones and "shading" to reproduce photo-type images with good results? Or would I be better off with the lesser powered 2.5W laser? Would the 2.5W produce smaller finer details than the 5.5W?
Also, I assume it would it benefit the longevity of the laser to be running 5.5W at half power rather than 2.5W at full? Is that a fair assumption?
My apologies for my basic questions. What's your opinion? Any advice or recommendation would be greatly appreciated