When I first heard laser cutting, I assumed it would be more hands on. With that being said, there is still quite a bit of skill that goes into creating a good-looking final product.

So here’s a quick rundown of the what we did on a laser cutter. There are two settings that we played with. The first is cut which basically just cuts the material. The second is engrave. This one is more complex. There are a few ways you can change the “color” of the material. If the material is acryllic it is really difficult to show different shades of color. Wood seems to work best if you’re looking for contrast. What Ben (my teammate) and I learned through this process is that MATERIAL is the key when it comes to having your piece look good.

Speed, Power and Scan Gap: Three parameters that are very necessary when it comes to having the outcome of whatever you’re cutting to look good. The slower the laser moves, the darker and potentially more charred it becomes. This is because the laser will heat up a small but finite area for a longer duration of time. Similarly, decreasing the scan gap will also lead to a darker shade. This is because the scan gap means how close to the first horizontal line the laser will engrave on its next iteration vertically. The range for 3-ply wood ranges from .002 to .004 inches. We found that SCAN GAP by far had the biggest impact when it came to contrasting color. To have detail fidelity maintained at a small scale, you would adjust power to around 10-15 in Engrave Labs (software that we used in tandem wit the laser cutter). This gives it a nice tinge without making it too dark or charred on the sides which is worse.

When the Logo first came in it was duplicated because even if you hide a layer in adobe illustrator (the platform used to draw what is to be cut), it still shows in Engrave Labs. Ben cleverly figured this problem out and we went back adobe and changed it.  We were there for two 2 hour sessions. This is because we played around with different materials and the necessary parameters to have the laser cutter operate well.

As a result, documenting what power, speed and scan gap levels we tried were crucial! We didn’t want to forget what settings we tried, but we found a whole lot of them that didn’t work optimally than those that did.

When it was all said and done, we used 3-ply birch and created an owl with the following parameters in Speed, power, Scan Gap order:

For a nice dark shade: 750/20/.004

Medium tinge: 650/30/.003

Light and delicate but still visible: 750/25/.003

For the most part watching the laser at work was awesome. Most of laser cutting revolves around knowing how to use adobe illustrator and Engrave Labs. It was a sweet experience overall!

 

Peace out for now. (Trying to add more flare to these now)