Wood cutting and engraving is great on the Gweike cloud. As one expects from a CO2 laser, its much faster than the ortur I was using before and I had to play quite a bit to find some good settings for the new laser to optimize the performance.
Cutting
I ran a few different thicknesses of wood as well as some other materials for my initial cutting work. Below is a table of the setting that I found to be best when cutting these materials
| Material | Speed | Power | Passes | Focus Height |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1/16in thick Wood | 31 mm/s | 95% | 1 | 16mm |
| 3mm thick Wood | 15 mm/s | 95% | 1 | 14mm |
| 3mm thick Clear Acrylic | 15 mm/s | 95% | 1 | 14mm |
| White CardStock | 80mm/s | 50% | 1 | 17mm |
Engraving
I also did some work to engrave stained wood for some effects. I was trying to have my engravings be differently colored than the stain on the wood. I found some basic rules of thumb to go along with the standard ones around depth.
A faster engraving gave a lighter color in the wood, it more removed the stain but didn’t color the wood after that. This showed up well over a dark stain. A slower engraving speed gave a darker engraving, slow and low power gives a sootier engraving for that dark color over a light stain.
Always remember to have proper ventilation when engraving over stained wood. You don’t want to breathe stain into your lungs. I found 400mm/s and 50% power to be a good setting for deeper engravings.
Conclusion
The Gweike Cloud laser cutter worked out great for doing wood engravings and cutting. This was expected from the higher power laser, but its still amazing when coming from a low power diode laser to see the performance of a good CO2 laser.