FlexiBrass

[Shane Turner]

Hi all.

We've been having some trouble getting the edges of our engraved flexibrass to come out correctly. It's either too deep and causes warping or too light.

Does anyone have a good place to start with settings? We have a Epilog Helix 45w.

[Peck Sidara]

Shane,

The manual reccommends 100% speed, 40% power when running at 600DPI. I suggest starting at this point, if it's too deep, slowly decrease the power setting in 1% decrements. If it's too light, slowly increase the power in 1% increments.

If that doesn't work, try playing with the focus a bit or try lowering the DPI to 400.

I'm sure you'll get it with some tweaking.

Hope that helps.

[Rodne Gold]

A good strategy with flexi is not to engrave as a solid black but a shade of grey and let the driver "space the dots" . this generally gives a solid black engraving (you are going to have to experiment here) without putting too much heat into the material.
Air assist should be used as well. You can also try a low tack spray adhesive on the back and adhere it to an acrylic/anodised ally sheet to keep it flat when lasering and cutting.
Flexi does not engrave well if you have large areas of fill. It will almost always warp in those areas.
You can also try another strategy and that is to do the thing in 2 passes , the first , slightly out of focus and only the large areas of fill , the 2nd in focus for the detailed stuff.

[Shane Turner]

Thanks Peck and Rodne. I forgot to mention that I was attempting some business cards. So no large areas of engraving are needed. Though the warping of large areas is a good point for me to remember in the future, much appreciated.
Changing the colour from black to grey worked a charm! Just trying to find a good low tack adhesive that wont leave a residue after I'm done.

Thanks a lot!