Will my h2d 10w laser be able to cut 0.2 and 0.3mm copper?
good question I am also curious to know the answer!
Short answer, no. Diode lasers don’t cut through metal.
Here’s the official info on all the materials:
https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/laser/material/types-and-examples-intro
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Unless you go really slow, the laser won’t even leave a mark. Copper is one of the hardest metals to cut because it’s highly reflective and it absorbs heat quickly. The laser energy dissipates before it can do anything.
You need very high power to cut copper. 10W is too low by a factor of 50-100x.
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How slow would you need to go?
I tried to scratch bare aluminium with my 40W and full power and 10 passes, you couldn’t se anything that a laser tried to do anything with that part.
Metals are not all the same. So what applies to Copper doesn’t necessarily apply to Aluminum. The laser’s wavelength matters. Metals reflect some frequencies more than others and a laser will not be as effective with those metals.
For example, my laser is CO2, which is Infrared. Copper is highly reflective at the laser’s frequency. If I put Copper in my cutter, the reflections would damage the laser head. Copper is a major “no” for CO2.
Some metals, like Stainless Steel, change color as a function of how hot the surface gets. So you can “mark” Stainless with a laser. The colors can be fairly vivid. But it’s not engraving. No material is removed. The H2D laser should do a reasonably good job of marking Stainless.
Copper can be marked in a similar way, although the effect is not nearly as pronounced as for Stainless. And again, no material is being removed.
So neither of these things are really “engraving”. No material is removed. The laser isn’t “cutting” at all.
Aluminum doesn’t mark. But if it’s anodized, a laser will do an excellent job of removing the anodization and the exposed Aluminum instantly oxidizes to a white color. So against a darker anodization color the results can be excellent. And this is actually removing some material (just the surface coating).
40W is nowhere near enough power to actually remove material and physically engrave bare Aluminum, never mind cut through it, so your results are not surprising.
There’s tons of stuff on line on laser cutters and there’s nothing special about the H2D’s diode laser. So almost any question you might have is probably answered. When I got my cutter, I spent a few weeks thinking of questions to search for, and reading the answers I got when I asked them.
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