I Ran CO2 Through My Laser And Here's What Happened
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- Опубліковано 1 жов 2024
- 🔥 Exploring CO₂ as an Air Assist for Laser Cutting 🔥
In this video, I delve into the intriguing concept of using CO₂ as an air assist for laser cutting. It all started with a viewer's question, and I decided to put it to the test! Join me as I experiment with CO₂ versus regular air on various materials, sharing my setup, results, and insights along the way.
🔍 Key Points Covered 🔍
Setup and Testing Process
Comparison between CO₂ and Regular Air Assist
Impact on Cut Quality and Efficiency
📸 Visual Results and Analysis 📸
Detailed comparison shots and analysis of cut quality
Insights into the effects of CO₂.
🤔 Final Thoughts and Recommendations 🤔
After thorough testing and analysis, I share my perspective on whether switching to CO₂ as an air assist is worthwhile. Plus, I invite you to share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below!
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Thank you for watching! See you in the next one. ✨
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Great idea for a video. I suspect that the turbulence around the air assist may pull in some air from the room, hence only a minimal improvement. If so you might get better results with an enclosure containing the laser and workpiece that you fill with CO2 (or Nitrogen) before you start. I would be careful doing this in enclosed spaces though… burning stuff in a reducing atmosphere will presumably generate some carbon monoxide.
I would expect that all of our lasers, when used on combustible materials, are producing some amount of CO. The charred edges of normal cuts in plywood would be indicative of incomplete combustion, which would also be associated with CO production. If the chamber is properly purged, there would likely still be some CO produced since there is oxygen within the molecular structure of cellulose fibers.
That's going to be an expensive "air assist" in this case if you were not in need of draining the cylinder to begin with, but CO2 does not absorb visible or UV light. Any inert gas (nitrogen, argon, etc.) should perform about the same (unless you use a gas that absorbs the laser's wavelength of light). The real test (that I would not recommend) would be doing this with a CO2 laser. The length of the laser beam in the path of the gas should be relatively short, but it would be expected to absorb some of the beam energy. Some of that absorbed energy would be sent in random directions, and some would be dissipated as heat.
Nitrogen is used in many higher end/Industrial level lasers- I think both CO2 and Fiber lasers sometimes use it. You get slightly cleaner cuts and certain materials benefit a lot more than others. If the laser is very fast it can justify the cost.
Thanks for the insightful comment! I had a similar thought about using it with CO2 lasers - Couldn't risk losing my shop to a failed science experiment! 😄
@@Chaos_God_of_FateIn some cases industrial lasers use oxygen for cutting strong materials, just like plasma cutters.
Nice experiment. I think the CO2 leaves a bit less charring in general. I've heard of using Nitrogen in CO2 lasers before but never thought about it on a diode laser like this. Seems like it'd be a bit of a hassle and expensive to run regularly though unless you can harvest your own CO2 and compress it, which sounds doable if you have the right equipment. Thanks for the vid :D
Yes, Nitrogen is used in industrial CO2 lasers, but at the slow pace of a diode laser, the amount of CO2 gas needed for each project would be way too high, no matter the source of CO2. 😀
Glad you found the video interesting. 😊
What about mixing the compressed air and CO2, could use less CO2 making it a bit more cost efficient, but personally I don't think it's worth the hassle when a scotch pad can do the clean up unless your doing a large amount of production runs I guess.
You are right. mixing compressed air might make it cost efficient, but I don't think it's worth the cost and effort. I'd rather spend a little extra time scrubbing away those stains. 😀
Very beautiful video 😍 thanks for 😊I will try with acrylic soon as possible, after wood tests i think this can be helpful on some sensitive materials such as textiles or similar.
Thank you! Cheers!
Good video. Thanks!
I enjoy your channel. Hope you are not attacked by the greenie tree huggers for allowing CO2 into the atmosphere.
Trees need CO2 for photosynthesis so I guess I'm helping trees lol. :D
Glad you like our content, thank you for watching :)
Like you I would have expected the CO2 to inhibit the burning since that is what a fire extinguisher is supposed to do.
If you look at the cutting footages, both of them produces almost the same amount of smoke.
Without burning can't take a cut😮
Interesting. I wouldn't have even thought to try that.
ha ha, thanks
Should try on acrilic
Ran out of CO2 before I could get to other materials, but will share the results if I get a chance to try it. 😀
@@MellowpineLasersI tried and send you some photos in mailbox.
Regards