Original subtitles

hey it's rich the louisiana hobby guy

you know since i did the video on the

universal test card i've had a lot of

people that are new to engraving

that just can't figure out where to get

started with it

so today we're going to do something a

little bit different we're going to talk

about the test card that you can do with

any laser in light burn

and

we're also going i'm also going to show

you how you match that

to get your starting numbers which is

that seems to be the biggest problem

well where do i start how do i set my

power and how do i set my speed well

stay right there because i'm going to

show you how to do this fast and easy

all right so now in version 1.2 if you

look up here

of light burn if you have the latest

version of light burn

you're going to find something new up

here called laser tools and in this

laser tools menu here you're gonna have

something called the material test and i

understand that the universal test card

is more for advanced users so i decided

that i needed to make a basic video and

show you how to use this material test

now you can use the universal test card

using the same principles as this but

i'm just going to show you with the

material test for today being that i've

never covered this before so we'll click

on material test and that'll open up a

new window

a generator in light burn

and

the first thing i'm going to do is i'm

going to click on the save button here

and i'm going to call this

demo so i'll say demo and say okay so

now we have a category called

demo and you can

do any type of presets in here that you

want you just save them one after the

other so what we're going to do is we're

going to do an engraving test

over here are your rows how many rows do

you want how many columns do you want so

let's do a full engraving test

let's do 10 rows and let's do 10 columns

and

let's start our engraving speed where

okay so that's the question

where do we start where do we start our

minimum

and maximum powers here's where we

answer the question let's close this for

now now over here i have and yours might

be up here you may not even have one on

your screen

a tab called library if you don't have

this tab you can right click on the

header

of any of these boxes here and then just

come over to where it says library

and put a check mark next to the box

that says library and then it will

appear on your screen if you still don't

see it on your screen you can also do it

from up here you can click on the word

window

and then come down here to where it says

to where it says library right here and

just put a check mark in next if there's

no check mark just check it and then

you'll see the the actual window appear

over on this side probably up on the top

in your case but you need to have a

library to load in the first place now

i've got uh in the shop next door i've

got the comgro 10 watt loaded here and

this library is going to give me all of

the basic requirements for the comro so

for instance

right now on here i've got some five

millimeter three ply plywood so i'm

gonna come down here to plywood i'm

gonna come down to

the closest thing i got is four

millimeter and we're gonna do a cut

we're also going to do an engraved test

as well on plywood so let's do the

engrave one first and let's take a look

at what the manufacturers suggested

speed and power is so if i click on edit

cut i'm not going to change anything i

just want to see what it is

and it says

5000 speed 100 power

in fill mode 2.5

over scan you're not going to need that

if you have a co2 you don't need any

overscan it's pretty much just for

diodes and a

318

lp high

now that's assuming that

this laser module it has a 0.08

focal spot

and it does it's 0.08 by 0.08

now to confirm all of this

we're going to head over

to comro's website and we're going to

look up the z1 10 watt right here

and we're going to just come down here

and look at the features we're going to

come all the way down to the specs

and any any manufacturer you buy from is

going to have specifications they're

going to have suggested cuts so here we

are

so here are the product parameters

and in here you'll see that

if we come down here to

the

10 watt right over here 0.08 by 0.08

millimeters so we know that that lpi is

right and then if we come down a little

bit further you're going to have some

reference point for your parameters now

i've gone ahead and i've transferred all

of these parameters

into the library and i've created a clw

file that light burn can use where you

don't have to refer back to the chart

every single time

so in here you'll see that for the

engraving on plywood it is

s 100 is a gerbil term that means 100

percent power 5000 millimeters per

minute and you can get all this

information from their website

from any manufacturer's website usually

so let's close that and you'll see

that's what we have point zero eight

zero point zero eight

so that's a 318

lpi dot size which is a very good one so

now we know that this information is

correct five thousand and

one hundred and that is the recommended

starting point for engraving

so forgetting about this over here now

you can get these libraries

for most any type laser on my forum la

hobbyguy.com

and i'll put a link below down in the

description where you can go if you're a

member you have to become a member and

membership is free a new category opens

up to members when they log in called

member only files and downloads and in

there you'll find cut library for

lightburn and you'll find the cut

libraries for diode lasers you'll also

find them for the co2 lasers match the

power that you have in this case it's 10

watt and this happens to come from

comgro so i've got 10 watt you're going

to download that library and then you're

going to come over here on your library

tab and load it into light burn now i do

have another video on that i'll put that

video on libraries down in the

description as well but for now

we're just going to use the

manufacturer's suggested

which is 5100

okay so let's come back to the laser

tools and the material test now we're

going to do 10 rows

the speed

minimum speed we're not going to trust

their recommendation

of and actually let's do let's do five

rows i think five rows is gonna be

enough

so we're gonna do five rows we're gonna

start the speed at let's start it at 4

000 instead of 5 000

let's put the maximum speed up to

say i don't know 7 000.

so

5000 is somewhere in the in the middle

there we're going to do 5 millimeter

squares

and we're going to do the same thing on

this time on this side now the columns

will do five columns

and this side is going to be power the

minimum power that we're going to use

they're saying a hundred is the

recommended so what power do you feel

comfortable using do you not like using

100 power because you can set these both

to the same thing if you wanted to you

could set it to a hundred and a hundred

let's go ahead and set it to fifty to a

hundred

percent power

and that makes sense to me so now it

will draw five by five squares

that will run from four thousand to

seven thousand millimeters per minute

and they will run between fifty and one

hundred percent power and we're all set

here and then we can also i did forget

to name this one demo but we've already

got it set up so we'll leave it alone so

let's go to preview

and

here's what we get

so it's going to show us the whole

preview here now this

doesn't look right did you notice that

it's in line mode that's not what we

want we want to check the engraving on

this so we're going to come over here to

edit material setting

we're going to change this from line

to fill

and that will be in engraving

okay

now you notice the line interval changed

so we're going to take our lines per uh

per inch

actually we're going to do it up here

0.08

and that will give us 317.5

and

that should be fine if we come back to

the preview that is what we're looking

for

so this is what's going to burn

onto our material

and now we will get

a result

from four thousand

forty seven fifty fifty five hundred all

the way up to seven thousand speed one

pass

and it will be anywhere from

uh

fifty percent power to 100 power

if i go all the way see there we go 50

62.5 75 85 and we should have a nice

grid here

and this will give us an idea of what to

look for how dark do you want your

engraving you're going to pick a black

on here you do you want it really dark

way down here or do you want it lighter

or what shade of gray all throughout

here

would you prefer

to run this job at and that's pretty

much what this test is

we're all set now we're gonna say okay

to that we're ready to run this job

so what we're gonna do is i'm gonna come

over to the

let me arrange this a little bit better

i'll put this here i'll bring the camera

out oh i can't bring the camera out

okay because i've already got this one

up so that's okay no problem

uh we've got the camera over here i'll

zoom in on it instead

and you'll see i've got the comro set up

with the 10 watt laser on it

and what i'm gonna do is i'm just gonna

home the laser first

because that's

and i can't do any of that with this

open

okay so let's let's go ahead and save

this preset as demo

like that and say okay

and now we're all set we've already

saved that so let's close that do what i

really wanted to do

let's bring this out

the camera out to here

let's bring it up just a little bit

actually looks like it's in the right

place but what i want to do is i want to

home it first

so i'm going to click home

just to make sure that we're going to be

in the right spot

and then i'll come over here to the map

icon on the left i'll click on that icon

and i'll click about where i think i

want it to go

and i think that's probably pretty close

to where i want it

and let's see what we get and that looks

pretty good let me move it up just a

little bit more

and let me look at my current position

bottom left is going to be the start

from

and i am now ready to bring my laser

tool material test back up

now we can move this out of the way

go ahead and pick the preset which was

demo

and it looks like it did not save it

oh here it is down here okay there we go

so now we have our five rows our five

columns

our speed our power is all set and we're

actually ready to run this test we're

going to preview it one more time and

that is exactly what we're looking for

and i'm going to hit the start button

and there it goes

so again this is very

simple

to set up

now this is going to take some time

so what i'll do is i will put this into

a fast forward

and then we'll go ahead and take a look

at the results and then we'll do the

line test

so what we're going to do today is we're

going to do the engraving which is

happening right now

and then we're going to move to the left

of that and we're going to do the actual

cut test

on this 5 millimeter plywood and see how

that comes out

so now i'm going to speed this video up

let it run through this job and then

we'll set up the next job

all right so that engraving is all

finished now

and i know this can seem like it takes a

long time to

get through but it really doesn't

it's really very quick so this time

we're going to do the cut test this time

so i'm going to come down here to my

library and if you don't have the

library and you don't want to go

download it for light burn

which i don't see why you wouldn't want

to

but just go to your manufacturer's

website or

on the usb stick that comes with your

laser

you'll find usually user instructions

and in there you'll find cutting in

engraving parameters but i'm gonna come

down here to the seven millimeter cut

and i'm gonna edit it just to look at it

and i'm gonna see that the speed should

be a hundred percent power

and

100 millimeters per minute excuse me and

90

power

okay so that is the

manufacturer's suggested

settings

for

cutting seven millimeter so we're just

going to remember that 100 speed 90

power and what we're going to do let me

show you how quickly this is done now

we're going to come in here to the

material test

we're going to do

uh let's do

uh let's do five rows and we're going to

do

minimum speed we're going to go from 80

we're not going to trust her 100 we're

going to maximum speed we're going to

max this out

at we're going to say 130

so that will give us a good range in

speed

and then we're going to do five rows

and the power

we're gonna go from let's go from uh

let's go from 80

to a hundred percent power and let's do

the same

five by five

let's do eight millimeter

because we're cutting here

so the five millimeters won't drop out

easy i'd rather put it up a little

higher eight or ten millimeters

so we will make an 8 by 8 millimeter

square

it will run from anywhere from 80 to 130

speed

it will run five rows five columns with

the power of eighty to one hundred

and actually we could make this you know

if you only use a hundred percent for

power like i do

well then i would make this a hundred

percent power just like that

now if we preview it you'll see that

that's not right because that's in field

mode

so we're going to edit the material

settings

we're going to change this to line mode

and that's all we need to do

one pass in line mode and we're going to

say okay

so now if we preview it this is what

we've got 100 power we're going to run

it at 80 speed

93 105 118 and 130 and actually let's

change the power because this doesn't

make sense we would only really need one

column right

so

let's do

five columns and let's do the minimum at

um 50 yeah 50 to 100 that looks good and

preview that

so now we'll have 50

62.5

75

87.5 and 100 and i would only expect

that it's going to cut through a few of

these but anyway this is going to give

us a good pattern to work with so now

the next thing we need to do and i

forgot we're going to uh

we're going to call it demo cut

like that

say okay because i have to close this

i always home my laser

before i start any job so

i'm going to go ahead and home it and

then i'm going to move it to

somewhere about where oh i have to click

the move to

the move button somewhere to about where

i think we want to start this job

and i'm thinking that

looks pretty good let's move it up just

a little bit

let's move it up right about there

maybe a little more to the left

and that looks pretty good right there

and we are in current position bottom

left so it will start right there and

work its way up and we are now ready to

come back to the laser tools material

test and let's go find that last one we

just did demo cut

so now we have five rows five columns

and we're ready to go check a preview

one more time

and

move this out of the way

and that's how quick it is to set up and

i could probably do this

you know three times faster if i weren't

trying to narrate my way through it so

we'll just go ahead and

hit the start button like that

and we'll let it do its thing

and again i am going to the air assist

is on by the way if you're wondering

and so is the smoke extraction over here

so uh it's gonna get some of the smoke

not all of it i should have really

brought it over a lot closer

but this is in the shop next door so i'm

really not too too worried about it

and uh we should be good to go i'll go

ahead and speed this up

and then we'll get into the final

results

do

[Music]

all right so we're all finished i went

and got the wood off of the laser

and this is what we get so here is my

really crappy photograph i don't know

why i can't get good photography looking

it looks like it's bent over here and

the the the cut

you can't see the colors

but anyway

as far as the engraving goes

i think that 75 percent 7 000 speed came

out just awesome on this five millimeter

baltic birch i think that's a just an

awesome speed and you know what i forgot

it's five millimeter we did it with the

seven millimeter cut library so we could

have cut it just blew through most of

this look at this 50 50 power

and 93 speed

and it it just blew right through it

so 105 speed 62 percent power

so we we could have actually

started our speed at the 150 mark on

this which is really awesome by the way

for you know a 10 watt laser now this

happens to be a good laser the comro

10 watt

out of all the 10 watts on the market it

it is the most powerful in an actual

light beam test in fact it's even uh one

one watt

more powerful than the x tool 10 watt

which is kind of surprising now i do

want to show you this is not a good

representation over here so what i'm

going to do is i'm going to zoom in on

the camera here and i'm going to show

you what this looks like this

75

75 power and seven thousand look at the

beautiful color

that it got there

the color is just awesome on this

particular wood

and this is what these test cards are

used for you get to know exactly

the color that you want

your burn to look like on that

particular piece of wood you get to pick

and choose from a grid

so that there's no mistakes when you go

and burn now you're going to sacrifice a

piece of wood

no doubt

but that's

what that's what lasering is all about

if you want

professional look

so you're gonna sacrifice that that

piece of wood there's no doubt about it

but you're gonna get the exact color or

shade of gray that you want by running

these tests you have one sacrificial

piece of wood one small piece of wood

let's say you're going to do an

engraving you just need like a 4x4 piece

of wood

to sacrifice and you go and pick and

choose the color of that engraving that

you want

and now you can even get into layers

and this is the fun part because you can

have some of the engraving like a

graphic of vector graphic for example

you can have some layers

done in a really light engraving other

layers done in a dark engraving and you

can get dimensional looks out of your

work

so there is your material test generator

built into light burn for newbies that

have never done this before and are

confused about the universal test card

video that i did

now i'll put a link or actually at the

end of this video i'm going to put

one of the links at the end of the video

you'll see the universal test card video

so you can go ahead and click on that

and i'll also put a link down below in

the description if you want to watch

that one next that's much more advanced

it gives you a lot of different settings

than this does but this is your basic

test card and you could you could work

with this

forever

all you have to do

is set up your rows

set up your columns with your speed and

your power

and there's even more in here you can do

line interval and other things

line interval tests and so on so uh

it's it's a really nice feature in light

burn

it only takes a minute to set up and i

know that sometimes the videos get a

little confusing because i have to go

off off topic a little bit it's not

really going off topic but you know like

saying you got to go to the

manufacturer's website and you know get

your parameters for different types of

materials but i mean that's just

necessary if you want to do this for a

business if you want to have

professional results

you're not you know you're not just

burning some mom on a piece of wood you

know you want to really have some

professional results for your engravings

using graphics using vector graphics

with this you can get different shades

of gray many different shades of of gray

and you can design your vector graphics

with all different shades to burn onto

the wood that will look absolutely

awesome

and i've done that with my christmas

my christmas santa

cutting board

so you know all of the different

graphics are different shades of gray

and it gives it a nice

sort of colorized

look

so

doing a test grid and you know lots of

people ask questions in the facebook

groups in the forum how do i get my

settings down the only way to get your

settings down is with a test grid

your your laser is not going to be the

same as mine it's not going to be the

same as the next one that ran off the

assembly line there are so many

different variables involved especially

when it comes to wood

you you have the ambient temperature you

have the moisture content of the wood

you have the manufacturer of the wood

how they manufacture it if it's plywood

you know

what are the uh how thick are the

veneers

what is the fill made of what type of

glue do they use there's so many

different variables that you can never

say i can't say to you i can cut plywood

you know at 200 millimeters per minute

and 80

power 5 millimeter plywood doesn't mean

that you can

because there are too many variables

involved so that's what this material

test generator is for

and to go even further you can move on

to the universal test card if you want

to do things like living hinges and

stuff like that

so

anyway

without getting

too far

off topic now

i hope that

this has opened your eyes if you're new

to laser engraving i understand the

universal test card video may have been

a little confusing so i wanted to

elaborate on this basic

material test card generator built into

light burn and show you exactly how to

use it exactly how to get your starting

numbers

and how to set it up so that you can run

your own tests

and

i'm hoping that i'm going to make you

into a professional

laserologist

so

anyway

i hope you enjoyed this video as much as

i enjoyed making it for you and as

always i thank you for watching and i'll

see you in the next one

[Music]

you