I got for fun one of the mini laser engravers just to see what I could do with it.
Here's a picture of some 1/8" high lettering I did on the sides of a chopstick (there's two together before being broken apart.)
Another picture all the scraps of wood I've been engraving.
and a picture of the engraver.
It's a 1000 mW unit that does about a 1.25 x 1.25" area, using 512 x 512 pixel image map. The stage is actually about 4"x4"
Found out a few interesting things.
Makes a lot of smoke. I have one of those particle monitors and 1 micron particles normally registers about 80,000-90,000, shoots up as high as 1,200,000 per cubic foot nearby.
Cutting pine puts a lot of resin in the smoke, it coats the wood, and leaves marks. The fan pulls it to the left and you can see some of the samples where the rubber band hold down left a unmarked line.Need more powerful fan and maybe a filter. Don't use it in the house, I think.
The hold down needs improvement - it uses rubber bands which can still move, esp. if the stage is holding larger parts. Also in alignment - the software will point at the center and will trace out a box where the limits of the image are, but its hard to get the workpiece lined up square and held well.
But, I guess that's what you get for $75 or 80 bucks.
Overall very little assembly, got it going very fast.
Software a bit buggy, hung a few times already. And the software docs leave a bit to be desired.
Images take a few minutes. And you need to do some experimentation to determine the "exposure" time. Softwoods take only about 20 ms, hardwoods more like 60-70 ms. I tried a piece of stone tile at 150 ms and it wouldn't even mark it.
Here's a picture of some 1/8" high lettering I did on the sides of a chopstick (there's two together before being broken apart.)
Another picture all the scraps of wood I've been engraving.
and a picture of the engraver.
It's a 1000 mW unit that does about a 1.25 x 1.25" area, using 512 x 512 pixel image map. The stage is actually about 4"x4"
Found out a few interesting things.
Makes a lot of smoke. I have one of those particle monitors and 1 micron particles normally registers about 80,000-90,000, shoots up as high as 1,200,000 per cubic foot nearby.
Cutting pine puts a lot of resin in the smoke, it coats the wood, and leaves marks. The fan pulls it to the left and you can see some of the samples where the rubber band hold down left a unmarked line.Need more powerful fan and maybe a filter. Don't use it in the house, I think.
The hold down needs improvement - it uses rubber bands which can still move, esp. if the stage is holding larger parts. Also in alignment - the software will point at the center and will trace out a box where the limits of the image are, but its hard to get the workpiece lined up square and held well.
But, I guess that's what you get for $75 or 80 bucks.
Overall very little assembly, got it going very fast.
Software a bit buggy, hung a few times already. And the software docs leave a bit to be desired.
Images take a few minutes. And you need to do some experimentation to determine the "exposure" time. Softwoods take only about 20 ms, hardwoods more like 60-70 ms. I tried a piece of stone tile at 150 ms and it wouldn't even mark it.
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