laser polymer help!

[Nadia Zois]

i am new to owning a laser and one of the things i wanted to do was make stamps. i picked the laser polymer method over the rubber one because of the smell issues. i finally got mine yesterday and i was so excited to make so stamps! and....i tried and failed..

i am using a versalaser 25watt. i have no idea what settings to put it on. so i tried a plastic setting, that hardly etched it..so then i tried the rubber settings and the first test one came out good. so i tried doing a bigger one...and that failed. it melted it, lots of goo and it turned it yellow.
what am i doing wrong?

what settings are good to use for it?

the problem i had at first was it was not etching deep enough to be a stamp...

any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks guys :)

[Frank Corker]

Never used this stuff before but if it melted, your speed is far too low and your power is way too high. This type of material will mark easily even with low power. I would suggest that you put it in and try it at 100 speed and 5% of power then move it up in increments of 5 or 10 until you get the desired result. This way you do not lose material practicing and at the same time you find the exact speed power to match your machine.

[Mike Null]

You probably have a rubber stamp mode on your machine. If so use that but expect to have to make several passes as you will need a depth of about 1/16".

If you have the rubber stamp setting it will make shoulders on the outline of the letters to give them more durability.

[Nadia Zois]

Never used this stuff before but if it melted, your speed is far too low and your power is way too high. This type of material will mark easily even with low power. I would suggest that you put it in and try it at 100 speed and 5% of power then move it up in increments of 5 or 10 until you get the desired result. This way you do not lose material practicing and at the same time you find the exact speed power to match your machine.

i honestly have no idea how to do that i only know how to use the default settings , do you have a versalaser? can you help?

[Frank Corker]

Nadia, no I have a different type of machine to yours. I would suggest you look at settings similar to paper and try those. Then cloth but all lower than plastic which was too much. The most delicate first and move up to different materials by their hardness. Certainly the rubber stamp mode is a must try.

Do you not have a manual which will explain to you how to go about altering the settings?

[Mike Mackenzie]

Nadia,

Which Versa Laser do you have VLS2.30 or VL-200. What we found was it is better to use the WIDE shoulder for doing polymer. Also you would be better off if you have air assist. Do bottom up engraving and because you have only 25 watts you should do two passes.

If you let me know what software version you are using I can tell you where to look to set-it up correctly.

[Dave Johnson29]

one...and that failed. it melted it, lots of goo and it turned it yellow.
what am i doing wrong?


Hi nadia,

My exact experience. I found it best to go for slow to medium speed and quite low power, maybe 30% and do multiple passes until it is deep enough.

I found with higher speeds I was getting over-burn at the edges so they were deeper than the rest. Slowing the speed and lowering power solved that. But I usually do 3 passes to get good depth. I also lowered DPI to about 80 so the successive passes were not so close together.

[Mike Mackenzie]

Nadia,

Please see attached and let me know if this is the software you are running.

[Bill Cunningham]

I do lots of custom stamps a year, and almost all are polymer. I use the stamp mode, @ 10% speed/100 power/600dpi..
Polymer etches about twice as fast as rubber. I have a polymer plate maker, and use it to make my own polymer sheets. I find a gallon of liquid stamp polymer will make about 4-7 thousand dollars worth of stamps and dies. When the polymer etches, instead of dust as you would get with rubber, you get a 'oily' residue, that washes right off under a flowing cold water tap. Warm water will work too I guess, but I only have cold water in the shop and it's worked well on lasered stamps for years. Cold water will 'not' work on stamps made using the traditional photopolymer negative/uv-light method, unexposed polymer will not wash off clean in cold water. So, obviously, the laser/heat alters the structure of the polymer while etching..