Lasering a Pumpkin

[Jeff Wilkins]

Has anyone ever lasered a pumpkin? Any thoughts or suggestions? Thanks

[Gary Hair]

I did a few years ago, it turned out really nice! I don't remember the settings but I don't recall that it took too much power. The difficult part is finding one that is small enough and smooth enough - you have to be able to lower your table enough to focus. If you find one that is smooth, round and the right size, you could put in a rotary fixture and laser away!

[Martin Boekers]

I have done a handful, the hardest part is finding a pumkin that has a pretty flat area. You will also have to affix it in place
as it has a tendency to vibrate as the lens carraige moves back and forth. I usually run a few passes and adjust the power
or speed on the fly. that way if you start to lose focus sometimes kicking up the power and/or slowing it down can make
up the difference.

[Glen Monaghan]

It's possible but there are a couple of problems. One is the curvature of typical pumpkins, which can make it difficult to do engrave more than a small area. Either stick with a small area, find an exceptionally flat sided pumpkin, use a design that has limited detail around the edges so that loss of focus there is less problematic, and/or use a longer focal length lens. Another is the size of the pumpkin you want to carve. Either the pumpkin needs to be small enough to fit inside your engraver cabinet or else you have to cut out the part you want to engrave in a way that minimizes visibility of the cut lines, engrave it, and then put it back in place.

A couple of years ago, I took this photo in China of a dragon carving on a wall:
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and subsequently created a 6 valued gray-scale version for a jack o'lantern which used the depth of carving to create shading levels:
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Last year, after a trip to Italy, I wanted to create a much more complex design based on Raphael's Vatican fresco, The School of Athens:
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so I used something like the "gold" method to laser that onto a pumpkin:
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You can see, especially at the top right corner how the drop-off slope resulted in darkness and loss of detail from insufficient engraving, while the lower left is blown out because it got engraved a bit too deep. Still and all, it does work. Oh, use air assist and plenty of exhaust to help keep the lens clean!

-Glen

[Rich Harman]

Someone I know who owns en Epilog EXT had one of their employees laser a pumpkin. I don't know what went wrong but there was considerable damage to the bed and optics.

Here's a video of someone engraving a pumpkin. I especially like their rotary solution.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDqTp33xjME

[Bill Cunningham]

Here's a video of someone engraving a pumpkin. I especially like their rotary solution.


Now THAT'S an interesting rotary system..