Uploaded September 2023 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
To most people, engraving is just setting a power, a speed and a line spacing. This simplistic approach to engraving may work on mineral materials like slate or anaodized aluminium but experimenting with JUST these parameters when engraving materials such as wood, leather or acrylic, will ALWAYS result in fume residue on the work.
There are many Youtube videos demonstrating the wonderous effects of masking with various low tack papers. Although this method provides clean edges to engravings it is blind to the fact that those same tar residues are still painting the main engraving areas with sticky browm residue. Is this really a fix???
IF you spend some time to understand how and why the fumes are created, you can mitigate surface residues by reducing the power or by increasing the speed. The side effect of these simple parameter changes is less depth of engraving and less contrasting "colour" on homogeneous surfaces materials such as birch or poplar plywood. However, "normal" wood is rarely a uniform material and the lower the power used, the more you see the different wood textures as different engraving colours..
Focus is a tool that few think to use. Setting the focus a few mm above the work "softens" the cuting action by spreading the beam intensity over a bigger diameter. Less vaporiation and more scorching produces a darker burn BUT at the expense of edge definition. This is only a "maybe" fix for some situations.
In this session I describe and demonstrate how with a bit more effort and thought you can solve both issues at once.
To most people, engraving is just setting a power, a speed and a line spacing. This simplistic approach to engraving may work on mineral materials like slate or anaodized aluminium but experimenting with JUST these parameters when engraving materials such as wood, leather or acrylic, will ALWAYS result in fume residue on the work.
There are many Youtube videos demonstrating the wonderous effects of masking with various low tack papers. Although this method provides clean edges to engravings it is blind to the fact that those same tar residues are still painting the main engraving areas with sticky browm residue. Is this really a fix???
IF you spend some time to understand how and why the fumes are created, you can mitigate surface residues by reducing the power or by increasing the speed. The side effect of these simple parameter changes is less depth of engraving and less contrasting "colour" on homogeneous surfaces materials such as birch or poplar plywood. However, "normal" wood is rarely a uniform material and the lower the power used, the more you see the different wood textures as different engraving colours..
Focus is a tool that few think to use. Setting the focus a few mm above the work "softens" the cuting action by spreading the beam intensity over a bigger diameter. Less vaporiation and more scorching produces a darker burn BUT at the expense of edge definition. This is only a "maybe" fix for some situations.
In this session I describe and demonstrate how with a bit more effort and thought you can solve both issues at once.
