Here is where I currently am at using one for marquetry/inlay:
This is the second attempt at doing this type of work. On this one I used a .031 dia ball nose tapered mill to cut the pockets to .025 deep. I then made a profile pass with the same tool but set the depth at .035 to provide a bit of relief from the curvature of the ball nose. I think that took about 8 minutes at 200 IPM.
The laser is a 2.5 watt from China. Very simple piece of hardware. Plug it in and it turns on. I have it connected to a relay so it is turned on by M3 and off by M5. The beam comes on at the beginning of the program and stays on until the end. When cutting the veneer I am cutting the mirror image so it does not matter if the laser leaves a slight mark on the pieces during rapid travel. I have not fiddled around with offsetting at all. I just cut on the line.
To cut .020 veneer at this power 4 passes are required. So I set the total depth of cut to .004 and the tool is set to take .001 per pass. This causes the four passes to be automatically created. The post does not output any Z motion whatsoever. In fact, it is pretty much stripped of everything but essential moves and commands. I have been using 35 IPM as the feedrate. I may actually increase this speed and increase the number of passes to see if it produces better results.
I do not do enough of this sort of thing to justify a standalone laser system. So for a bit more than $100 this works just fine.
One of the great things about Aspire is being able to modify a post processor. Programming this stuff is as easy as it gets.
This is just a test piece so there are a couple of things I would have done differently, but it is all part of the learning process. Oh, the itty bitty twigs are about .07 at the thinnest portions. Those are the twigs attaching the leaves.
The cutting and gluing process is quite fast. Much faster than the design work.
Edit: I have ordered some tiny endmills from China, they are 1.5mm in diameter. Should be interesting figuring out what feedrate works for them.
