Engraving wood using fiber laser

[Maxim Pernatiy]

Hello,

Initial data: Raycus 50wt, 200 * 200
Material: Plywood, oak.
Task: Get an engraving.

After reading the manuals, it became clear that a fiber engraver can not engrave on wood, however, some of my colleagues in the workshop do this engraving, claiming that they have fiber engravers.
As far as I know, wood engraving can only be obtained on CO2 or galvanic CO2 machines.
If nevertheless I am not right, please tell me the approximate parameters for such an engraving for testing.
Thanks in advance for your reply.

[Bill George]

Some wood can be engraved with a fiber, you will need to experiment to find out.

[Keith Outten]

Bill's comment is also true when using a standard CO2 laser. Some wood species just don't engrave well and oak is one of them. Pine is also a poor choice. Try cherry, alder, maple, mahogany, walnut or hickory. Maple being one of the best because it does not darken over time so you don't lose contrast. Cherry and alder are excellent initially but the contrast degrades over time. I don't have any experience with a fiber laser but I assume that some of the rules of CO2 laser engraving wood still applies based on the chemical makeup of each species.

Lots of threads here about engraving a variety of wood species.

[Kev Williams]

The little bit of wood I've tried on my fibers, just smokes. But I haven't had much practice time to see what parameter changes may or may not work--

[art olin]

The little bit of wood I've tried on my fibers, just smokes. But I haven't had much practice time to see what parameter changes may or may not work--

https://www.mecco.com/blog-can-a-fiber-laser-engrave-wood

[Neville Stewart]

Dark woods, mahogany, teak etc will engrave well, light & open grain like oak won’t or will just burn irregularly.

[Duncan Crawford]

Bill's comment is also true when using a standard CO2 laser. Some wood species just don't engrave well and oak is one of them. Pine is also a poor choice. Try cherry, alder, maple, mahogany, walnut or hickory. Maple being one of the best because it does not darken over time so you don't lose contrast. Cherry and alder are excellent initially but the contrast degrades over time. I don't have any experience with a fiber laser but I assume that some of the rules of CO2 laser engraving wood still applies based on the chemical makeup of each species.

Lots of threads here about engraving a variety of wood species.

Like Ken I can't speak to a fiber laser-- wish I could-- but there's one 'unexpected' material that might work for logos or line drawings. I've had some luck with Home Depot white 'handi-panel', using a 40 watt CO2 Mini-18. That's just gloss white paint, nice and smooth, on 1/8 inch masonite. Also works well as a cheap dry erase white board :-) I've done line drawings, logos, and some grayscale photos, and at about $11 per 4x8 sheet it's good for practice. For a grayscale photo the settings were 75 speed, 100 power at 400 dpi and a Stucki dither. Tried 1-Touch, Gold method in Photoshop and processing in CorelDraw but those didn't do as well as a simple grayscale. I'd speculate the hard gloss paint layer might give you a chance with the fiber laser. Some sample pictures in a zip archive are in my Dropbox account here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/g1fy4oqizq0bx8i/HandiPanel%20and%20chestnut%20examples.zip?dl=0

One of the items is a desk name plate, with two inlays in a piece of old wormy American chestnut. As an aside, the chestnut did not darken all that well, so the lettering is paint filled.

Duncan

[John Ying]

The sample pictures look great!