Hi all, could anyone help me troubleshoot problems I’m having engraving rubber with my K40? Small items are mostly consistent, like this:
but a lot of pieces over a certain size start to go like this:
These are all 4 passes, 60mm/s at about 12% power which is definitely sufficient for smaller pieces to engrave as deep as you would want to go for a stamp. It’s eco rubber which doesn’t seem to give off much smoke or fume at all (and I’ve had the exact same issue with regular rubber so it’s not the specific material)
I clean the lens regularly with a cotton bud and it comes away with barely any dirt on it so I don’t think the lens is getting dirty - and it seems to mainly affect when the laser is making long horizontal sweeps.
Sometimes it mainly affects the areas further down the engraving, like this:
But I’ve tested a narrower piece which went almost the entire vertical distance across the bed and it was fine:
At first I thought the material wasn’t perfectly level, but I’ve tried raising it up and down by as much as 3-5mm and the effect is exactly the same.
Appreciate any thoughts!
I’ll let you know how it goes. I’ve noticed that when it fails there seems to be a lot of accumulated dust which is blacker than the material when it’s working properly, so it might be a layer of dust building up and the laser then having to fire through it…