Been having a lot of fun on my vacation messing with the new laser! Made a few projects and still trying to dial in things, but they are coming along nicely! This should add another layer of ability to the projects I already do and should hopefully help my little business offer more items!
One question on glass etching, some areas of the etch are uneven. What could cause this? My settings were 30mm/sec at 100% power. Sprayed with matte black Krylon. Might try dialing the speed down to 25.4%. But for a first etching…Not to shabby.
Edward, did you use the laser to cut the dovetails on the plywood box and drawer? If so, how thick was the plywood, and were you able to cut through it in one pass? Finally, what laser did you purchase?
The reason I’m asking these questions, is because I am considering buying a laser for my MK1 30X30 unit.
I have only fired up the laser for a few experiments. This week will be the first I will be focussed on working with and on the longmill. Before, it was an hour here and a minute there, tops.
So I lasered some eggs, because that was my first whatabout my brain came up with. It went surprisingly well, and she wants loads off them, themed year round.
I did the logo of my girl’s shop on a piece of scrap pine with what felt like conservative settings, and it came out like this after just 2 hours.
If I had to guess, those are not dovetails but rather finger or box joints. Here are some projects that I have done with a 5.5 peak wattage SainSmart laser. My laser is small and it always takes me multiple passes, like 5-7 for these projects.
This is probably my most ambitious laser project I designed, the plexiglass was done with a router and has dog bones, the rest was all laser. This is 1/8" plywood.
These were finger joints on 3mm birch. It was 6-7 passes. This is more of an engraving laser than cutting laser. There is an “air assist” but not in the traditional sense of what laser machines normally use. So cutting with this laser, as stated by Sienci, isn’t practical for big projects.
I had only one day left on my free lightburn copy and need to put the payed version on another computer that i will setup after I will get to after I’m done doing other jobs that do not involve any Longmill machines.
I did only a few experiments with etching that were mostly 2.5D experiments with laser finish so I felt a bit under experienced, but I also had the urge to do some experimenting and I cannot silence that itch with scratching.
So off I went, picking a nice slab of teak (only did pine before.) and got to work. After a bit of twinkering I got the design I liked.
Saw that the etch was a bit edgy on some points and decided that this was enough reason to have a go at scratching the itch good. I just received a batch of powder-coating I wanted to play around with and threw it at the lettering that didn’t came out right.
It did a marvelous job, even on spots that were not burned in. So I felt confident to try and get some more contrast into the etch by coating the darkest parts using a dedicated mask.
It did work out, but… the piece was pretty stained so I tried to clean with water and some light sanding. The sanding was a mistake that forced me to re-etch the complete slab, virtually destroying the coat that does not cope well with being “activated” twice.
I should have excluded the coated parts, but my time was limited so I took the easy road at the end. Calling it a finished product and made someone really happy indeed.
