Best setting for wood engraving?

[Chad Paulsen]

I've been playing with wood for the last week and I'm still unhappy with my results. I was wondering what settings you guys used with for your power, speed and air assist? I've tried a bunch of different settings and can't find the right one any help would be appreciated.

[Bruce Volden]

Chad, much depends on the species of wood you are engraving! My favorite is cherry as it is not "fussy" and I always get a prounounced burn. Pine, fir, whitewood I usually get "smoke damage", a halo effect where the smoke gets into the grain. Walnut usually comes out ok but I do have to colorfill on occasion to get it to "pop". Oak~~~~~avoid as the readily open grain will swallow details. I don't know exactly what you are expecting but please keep in mind wood is, well, wood and has its own intracacies between the species. HTH ?

Bruce

[Martin Boekers]

What are the results that you aren't happy with?

That will help us to give you a better direction.


Marty

[Brian Robison]

I've started engraving a little faster than suggested but engraving twice, the second engraving really seems to leave a much darker mark.

[Martin Boekers]

I find 2 passes works better on some woods. Maple I almost always do 2 quicker passes.

Marty

[Chad Paulsen]

Those are the woods i've been experimenting with, do you guys put wax on the wood to prevent the smoke damage from hitting the wood? I've read a few things about that but havn't tried it. My engraver has been acting up a little so i've only been able to do one pass and when i slow my speed down below 100% it engraves a shadow like picture and it looks terrible. My client wants me to go deeper but i can not slow my speed down, i called the company i bought the machine from but there not getting back to me in a resonable amount of time so i'm looking for help wherever i can get it. Could my laser be out of adjustment, i don't think that's the case because when i run it at 100% 1/4" away from the board it comes out alright just not very deep. What distance do you guys run your laser away from your wood? Any help is awesome.

[Martin Boekers]

What laser do you have?

Just how do you decide the distance to focus?

Marty

[Brian Robison]

Chad,
You need to know the focal length of your lens.

[Dan Hintz]

Could my laser be out of adjustment, i don't think that's the case because when i run it at 100% 1/4" away from the board it comes out alright just not very deep. What distance do you guys run your laser away from your wood?
I guarantee you this is at least one problem you have... no standard machine has a 1/4" focal length lens (unless you're possible talking about the distance from the tip of an air cone). Distance between the bottom of the carriage and your material should be much closer to 1.5-2.0".

[Chad Paulsen]

We have a Camtech L20 it's a 55 watt laser. We initially bought the laser to do granite and marble but we are now experimenting with other materials. I figured when we do granite/marble pictures or anything involved with that we leave the tip of the cone 1/4" away from the laser and run it at 4% things seem to turn out pretty good with those settings. But i kinda figured that these settings would be universal for other materials but sounds like everything is different. I'm gonna try and leave the tip 1.5-2 inches away tomorrow and see what the outcome is like Dan said and hopefully we get better results. Thanks for the help fella's

[Niklas Bjornestal]

It's the lens that should 2" away (it is usually this distance that is measured), so if you have a distance of 1/4" from the tip of the cone you might have correct focus.

[Brian Robison]

Chad, can you focus while running? If so you can easily figure out where you need to focus.

[Chad Paulsen]

Yeah i think i am talking about the tip of the air cone being 1/4" inch away from the wood. Is this the right focus and how can i tell when my focus is good. The finished product comes out the way i want it? How far away do you guys keep your cone tip away from your wood when you engrave? I'm really new to this engraving thing and have not had much of any training so sorry for all the questions but you guys are a ton of help.

[Richard Coers]

I went to the Camtech website. Your machine has the laser mounted on the Zaxis, most of the machines that the guys are telling you about, have the laser mounted in the back of the machine and use mirrors and a focusing lense to direct the beam. Somewhere on your machine, there should be a lense mounted between the laser and the table. They have to get the beam down to .005" in diameter for the fine work it will do. Look for a disc of plastic, something in the order of 3/4' diameter and maybe 1/2" thick. This will hold a focusing lense. You will need to know where it's at anyway, because when you work with wood, you will need to be able to clean it. The end of the lense to the work surface will need to be set the 1 1/2" to 2" distance that is being talked about.

[Rodne Gold]

Wood is a material the laser has to process WRONGLY for best effects.
Lasers work by vaporising and if you do vaporise the wood , your engraving will not have contrast as for wood , you really want to burn and char for the branded effect.
Depth is normally not such an issue with lasering wood , getting the balance between crisp engraving and a nice contrast mark is...
So the strategy can be to defocus to spread the power of the beam to burn rather than vaporise which wont allow extreme fine detailed work or to focus correctly and "dwell" more over the engraving , IE be slower or add more power so that laser pulses overlap and one adds heat to the previous one allowing "char"
As to focus point , you can check where yours is by rastering a grid of thickish lines on a piece of sloping material , where the grid is crispest and best defined is your actual best focal point and you can measure its height to the lens/cone and set yours accordingly.
You might want to keep the head further away from the table when doing wood due to smoke and vaporised and gaseous resins from the wood which might contaminate the lens , you can do this with a bigger focal point lens with the caveat that longer lenses will do less detailed work

[Gwendolyn Lee]

Not sure if you found the answer you're looking for yet, but I've found that, in addition to changing the speed/power/defocusing/etc etc settings, changing the dpi of the output/spool file viathe print driver can make a huge difference.

The coarseness of the various woods vary so greatly, depending on the type of wood, those dpi pulses can occur too closely together and caramelize the material. I played with power, speed, masking, air assist, but was never really pleased with the results. If I was pleased with the results, the wood was tack-y. Depending on the grain of the wood, too high a resolution isn't really needed, anyway.

I've run maple at 250dpi, birchwood ply at 333dpi with great results on a 120w. We run at full power and a "full-speed ahead". No tack.