etching is slower, because that is highly dependent on the speed of the motors/ motor controller, and complexity of etching.
For just cutouts however , they're super fast. definitely can cut hundreds in an hour, even on a the budget 90watt lasers.
Sorry Tp, but you're simply wrong here.
1 inch per second is quite fast for a 100w laser cutting 1/4in ply (based on Camfive's $7500 100w laser cutter who promotes theirs this way on
Youtube), that's not taking into account complicated curves or multiple sharp corners on something like these boxes would need. I own and have access to 3 lasers of similar power and they all run pretty close to this speed as well, so it's not just that one brand.
So... Let's take a rather small USB hub and run the numbers.
4inches for the top (perimeter), plus the added length to make the joints would triple that number, so 12 seconds, add about 3 seconds simply because of acceleration rates and rounding (the small cut size hurts it here) so 15 seconds per top and bottom. Figure 10 seconds per side and 8 per end, we'll say 4 seconds travel time just to round out the numbers.
That's about 1minute 10 seconds per box.
Let's say I'm off by 10 seconds seconds and make it an even minute, you still have to remove parts and replace the wood, and set origin each time, which takes time. Yes, you can do more than one per chunk of wood/batch and use a jig to avoid resetting origin each time, but you still have all those parts to collect and clean up after each batch, so odds are, 40, maybe 50 per hour is a more reasonable number. Even if you doubled the speeds, it's a far cry from hundreds per hour. You also do not want to run your laser at 100% all of the time as they are a consumable item and this causes it to wear faster. The less power you use and the colder you keep it, the longer it lasts, so even these numbers are optimistic, we use a water chiller to keep ours just above freezing and run it usually at no more than 80%.
Yes, there are industrial machines that run faster, and cut larger chunks of wood, but you are talking a LOT of money and they are not using a wimpy 100 Co2 watt laser.
By the way, etching complexity is incorrect. Motor speed and surface area matter here, but not complexity, it simply runs over it and turns the laser on and off while going back and forth over the project, there are no turns. Cutting is where complexity matters as the head has to make multiple turns, accelerating and slowing down for each turn rather than just sweeping back and forth while blinking the laser.
