Delrin

[Julian Ashcroft]

I'm having a go at making some leather embossing stamps on my laser. At the moment I have made a couple of test pieces out of laminate flooring, it's quite dense MDF and maintains the detail quite well. The one in the picture has a depth of about 2.5mm. I haven't cut it out of its surrounding material yet, but a test embossing on my press worked well. I don't know however how durable the material will be.

I have heard of Delrin and that it works well for laser engraving. Are there different types? as I've read some give off nasty fumes, while others don't. It doesn't appear to be a cheap product, so before I splash out on a sheet I would welcome anyone's thoughts.

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[Chuck Stone]

I haven't tried cutting Delrin but I've marked it. Kinda melty.
But I've had decent luck using Corian instead. Tried it out for
leather embossing and made a positive/negative pair using
the 3D mode to simulate a basketweave and then I pressed
damp leather between the pieces. Seemed to work pretty well,
the test piece still looks good months later

[Mike Null]

Julian

Delrin engraves quite well and is commonly used for stamp making.

I have had very good success using acrylic stock (scraps) in 1/8" or 1/4" thicknesses. In some cases I vector the image (reverse) and glue it to another piece of acrylic. The piece shown below is a coaster about 3.5" in diameter. The die was engraved.

[Julian Ashcroft]

Corian sounds interesting, lots of it available as off cuts, should I stick with white or will other colours laser okay? Have a box full of acrylic, not thought of trying it, Is it not too brittle for finer detail?

[Steve Clarkson]

I'd be very careful with delrin........the off gas is formaldehyde.

[Julian Ashcroft]

Thought I would give Corian a try, plenty of offcuts and pieces on eBay, but quite expensive just to see how it works. Googling I came acroos Dupont's Corian Website and they provide free samples. Today a padded envelope arrived full of pieces of Corian. Will be giving it a try tonight.

[Keith Outten]

Julian,

You will find that Corian will engrave extremely well, in fact very fine details are easy to raster engrave. However, I'm not sure that fine detailed engraving would hold up to the pressure you would put on a die.

[Keith Outten]

This is a larger sign made with the same logo but a much better quality picture. There are 2 pages of Corian pictures in my SawMill Creek Gallery (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/album.php?albumid=719).

[Graham Taylor]

Thought I would give Corian a try, plenty of offcuts and pieces on eBay, but quite expensive just to see how it works. Googling I came acroos Dupont's Corian Website and they provide free samples. Today a padded envelope arrived full of pieces of Corian. Will be giving it a try tonight.

I too have requesated samples so would be interested to know how you get on with it

[Mike Audleman]

I too have requesated samples so would be interested to know how you get on with it

Why not contact a local corian installer (kitchen/bath remodeling too) and see if they can spot you some scraps. You don't need big pieces to try, heck even rounds from hole saws where they install a faucet would be enough to engrave something on and test as a stamp/press. They probably have a bag of the stuff in their van from the last job they did.

[Chris DeGerolamo]

Forego the delrin, as stated it is melty...

[Julian Ashcroft]

This is the result. The design on the left was engarved at 90% power, 100mms and eight passes. The design on the right was engraved at 95% power and 50mms and four passes. I was using a 50w Shenhui 350. Size of each design is around 30mm across.

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