Logos on Pens

[Jim Lauer]

Hello,

I just was asked to engrave some pens for a local woodworker and put the USMC logo on the pen with the name of the person. The name is no problem, but are there any things I should look out for when doing the logo that small?

I have obtained the licensing for the US military branches, so I am good there, just never done logos that small before. Any advice is very much appreciated.

Jim

[matthew knott]

If you have a short lens use it, also keep the power low as the lower it is the smaller the laser spot, I would run on a test part and get the power right down to the point its close to being unstable 10-15% then play with the speed, sometimes you need to teak the artwork to compensate so what it engrave looks like what you expect.

[Jim Lauer]

Thanks for the quick reply!

[Chuck Stone]

although we usually want the largest image we can get to start with,
this is one of those cases where you could fuzz up all the detail by
reducing it too much. I'd start with an image size closest to what you'll
end up engraving, and keeping your beam's spot size in mind when
figuring the dpi

[Bert Kemp]

When doing pens I always run tests on dole pins as close the the pen size I can find.

[Steve Busey]

Make sure the pen material is a very tight grain, so your small image stays uniform in depth (think hard maple vs an open grain oak or ash). You could also max out your resolution, up to 1200dpi if you have it.

[Mike Troncalli]

I am going to have to agree and disagree with two of the posters here (sorry). We engrave hundreds of pens per year in many different species of wood. Maple, Walnut, Rosewood, Bamboo, etc.

1. If you can, have a sacrificial pen to dial in your settings
2. Image size (in this case) smaller really is better
3. Power - Lower power is better
4. DPI - Lower DPI is better.

Higher power and higher DPI settings puts too much laser beam in too small of an area and your image can fuzz out or just be a charred blur... Most important thing really is the sacrificial piece, once you get that to where you want it, the rest is easy.

[Jim Lauer]

Thanks everyone. I have a lot of sacrificial pens from the learning process of turning and engraving, so not a shortage there.

I think the first thing to do is to lower the amount of lines in the desired artwork. The actual seals for the military branches are pretty intricate. Maybe the alternate logos may be better than trying to get all of the detail in the available area.

[Mike Troncalli]

The actual seals for the military branches are pretty intricate. Maybe the alternate logos may be better than trying to get all of the detail in the available area.

Try both, but you are most likely correct.