Engraving Baseballs

[Tim Baude]

Hello and thank you in advance. Does anyone know of a good setting for engraving baseballs? I have a 45W Epilog Helix. I used the setting for leather, but wasn't real happy.
Thank you

[Kev Williams]

explain 'wasn't real happy'. Too burnt? Not enough burn? Not enough color change? Too deep?

All lasers are different so it's pretty much trial and error... But with leather, as with most items I stick under the beam, I find quite often that less is more. I engrave leather motorcycle seat covers, lots of Padfolio's and other leather covers that hold notepads and such. Normally I have the best luck engraving leather at or around the same power/speed settings as I use on black/white Rowmark, but with the resolution settings cranked down, I rarely do leather at more than 300 dpi, and never more than 400. Leather is very forgiving as to detail, and too much beam overlap can be counterproductive, random overburnt spots and banding in an otherwise nice engraving will have you gnashing your teeth...

some leather can take a lot of power and handle deep engraving, some can't. Baseballs, being thinnish bright white leather I would try very low power- with your 45 watts, try 20-25%, about 80% speed, 300 res both directions and work up- or down, from there... seems it would be pretty easy to overcook baseball leather. Never done one... ;)

another thing I do that helps, is to turn whatever I'm engraving into a 200dpi bitmap and engrave it as a photo. Even text. If your Helix will do automatic halftone/grayscale engraving, make your text/graphics 80% gray. The dithering to create grayscale causes the beams pulses to break up which reduces beam overlap a ton...



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[Mike Null]

As Kev says, the leather is thin. The horse hide on baseballs will crack very easily under the heat of a laser. I just don't do them feeling that it is a "no win" situation.

[Chris DeGerolamo]

Change your black to 80% as Kev noted and you'll have better results.