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Have you ever seen an image lasered onto a piece of wood in breathtaking detail? How about one that didn’t turn out as expected? Wood laser engraving can create beautiful results, but those results are not guaranteed.
C02 lasers love wood, but getting those beautiful results requires a bit of know-how. Consider the following tips to ensure you get the most out of your wood laser cutter.
Some woods respond to laser cutting and engraving better than others. Choosing the best wood will be based upon your end product goal. Both hardwoods and softwoods have the ability to engrave really well, however, choosing a non-porous wood would be best for a 3D engraving and usually has a better cut quality. Some examples of ideal wood types for laser engraving are maple, cherry, birch and select white pines.
If you are looking for a surface etching, choosing a non-porous wood isn't as big as a factor. Getting your desired look will be about how the etching looks to the contrasting raw material and your speed and power combinations on your laser system.
Another thing to look out for in wood is the knots. Knotted areas are harder than knot-free areas. As a result, wood laser engraving will be inconsistent across knotted wood.
I’ve been working one some new designs based on quilt blocks that involve engraving to create a two toned design. Given that the engraved / unengraved area is roughly equal, I thought this would be a good time to test whether it’s better to paint first, then engrave away the color or surface you don’t need, or engrave first and fill in the engraved areas with paint.
The patterns I vectorized were classic quilt block: Old Maid’s Puzzle, Contrary Wife, Pinwheel, Ohio Star, and Hexagon.
WOOD SELECTION
The best wood for wood engraving is boxwood. A boxwood tree grows very slowly, hence the hardness and density of the wood. Boxwood is increasingly harder to come by and therefore very expensive.
A great alternative to boxwood is lemonwood (it's called this name because of the smell, it's not wood from a lemontree), which is quite hard as well and a bit less expensive.
American hard maple is softer than lemonwood, so is Holly, but in my opinion they're both great to work with as well. I've also tried a little piece of pearwood and was pleasantly surprised! It’s a bit softer than lemonwood, but still quite dense. I found it nicer to work with than hard maple.
These last three types of wood are less expensive than lemonwood, which is of course great when starting out and learning the technique.
The width of woodblocks for wood engraving is usually about 23mm. The surface of the blocks is extremely smooth, when you stroke it with the tip of your finger it's like running it across a glass surface. A little scratch or dent can show up on the final print, so you have be careful with it.
To be able to engrave a block, you'll need the right tools. While they may look a little bit like the Pfeil palmtools that are often used for making linocuts and woodcuts, they're quite different. These are no gouges, but engraving tools such as gravers, scorpers and spitstickers.
Scorpers come in two shapes: flat and round. They look a bit like mini chisels and are most used for clearing areas on the block, or with the smallest sizes, making strokes or dots.
Gravers come in two shapes as well: square and lozenge. These make sharp, thin lines and can also be used for strokes that vary in width, by changing the angle of the tool while working.
Starting to engrave the wood is not too different from when you start with a gouge on linoleum: you hold the tip of the tool on the material and push the tool forward. The angle in which an engraving tool is held is different from holding a gouge though! The tool lies almost flat on the surface. Hold it up too high and the point will run into the wood and get stuck. The lines you carve don't need to get so deep, a small incision on the surface is enough to show up in the print.
The printing part is not too different from any other relief printing technique. You do need to use an oil based ink though! Water based inks will be absorbed by the block and will cause the grain to raise, which will ruin your engraving. Also, printing on textured papers is quite difficult. A highly detailed piece often looks best on a smooth type of paper anyway... I've had great results on Simili Japon paper.
Any wood that is lightweight and has minimal streaking will produce high quality and attractive engravings. Some of the best woods for laser engraving include Plywood, Alder, Douglas, Balsa, Fir, and Cork. The wood's resin content determines whether your engraving will become light or dark.
Moreover, it can engrave and cut lots a huge wood variety: Beech, Walnut, Oak, Birch, Bamboo, Maple, Pine, Cherry, the CO2 laser engraver is respectful of the wood when processed, so varnish or paint can be put afterwards.
NO PLYWOOD
While plywoods and veneers hold definition well, making them great candidates for surface engravings, they are not a great choice for 3D engraving. Plywoods and other plys made up of many layers are full of glue and air pockets, which get in the way of 3D laser engraving.
When a laser has air in front of it, that air causes the beam to expand, causing you to lose focus or detail. With a hardwood or solid piece of wood, the beam has a tunneling effect, which allows the beam to stay in focus and results in crisp, clean engravings.
It's worth noting that cutting can be a challenge on plywood also. The glues and chemicals that go into the plywood can cause flames and burning. These problems don't occur with solid pieces of wood, allowing them to cut a lot nicer. If you are planning to cut plywoods, do it at a faster speed to decrease burning and reduce the chance of charring.
In order to get great results with wood laser engraving, it’s vital to have a flat, consistent surface. Woods must be planed down properly, otherwise they will not engrave nicely.
TEAK WOOD
Teak wood is one of the most commonly used wood types, available locally. Some manufacturers also import teak wood from Burma and Ghana. In India, Kerala is one of the biggest suppliers of teak wood. It is strong and very durable and is often used for building door frames, cabinets and tables. Teak wood is resistant to decay and can outlast all other types of wood. Since it is a hard wood, it can also withstand extreme heat and cold and therefore, it is also used for creating outdoor furniture.
SATIN WOOD
Furniture or articles that have a vintage look, are made of satin wood. It is an affordable material and is available locally and is supplied from central and southern Indian states. However, satin wood requires regular maintenance. Satin wood furniture is also hard and durable and can be given the desired look or finish, by using different types of polish. Satin wood furniture usually has a very lustrous look, since its grain is varied. Usually, satin wood furniture is bright yellow-coloured and in warm shades.
WHITE CEDAR WOOD
Also known as Marandi, it is a good veneer for light-weight furniture, such as display shelves, trunks or even decorative items. This type of wood requires minimal maintenance and therefore, it is most preferred for items which are not used often. White cedar wood is mostly imported from Malaysia and it requires month-long seasoning, before it becomes ready for use. Since it is a soft wood, it is used to create the interior parts of sofa and dining chairs, which are later covered with upholstery. It is an affordable wood, which looks great and is very effective in terms of strength and load bearing.
SAL WOOD
Sal wood is considered one of the most high-quality grades of wood, used for furniture and construction purposes. Sal wood is a type of timber, which does not require layers of polish to protect its durability. It has an ability to withstand water and underground damp conditions. Sal wood furniture is termite-resistant and usually used for manufacturing door frames, staircases and beams. Sal wood is usually found in Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
INDIAN ROSEWOOD
Also known as Sheesham, Indian rosewood is a favourite for making furniture. It is also a hard wood and can be used with different polishes and finishes. Although rosewood is the most expensive type of wood available in India, it is mostly preferred due to its termite-resistant quality, durability and versatility. Rosewood can be used for making kitchen cabinets, sofas and even wooden flooring. Sheesham is also used in musical instruments and is largely found in south India.
MAHAGONY
Mahagony even stays durable underwater and takes up a deep color after polishing. It is found in Bengal, Assam, and Kerala.
Advantages of Mahogany :-
Glossy Finish : Its pores absorb paint so well that it gives an elegant glossy finish that makes it a perfect choice for making furniture.
Durability : It doesn't decay under water.
Finesse : It is the finest wood, therefore, can be sculpted easily.
Mahogany is used to make cabinets, furniture, and patterns in decorative pieces of art.
MULBERRY
Mulberry wood or Morus alba, gives a neat finish and can be carved easily to make floors and ornate pieces of furniture and decoration. It gives a neat finish and can be carved easily to make floors and ornate pieces of furniture and decoration.
Advantages of Mulberry :-
Strength : It is tough and elastic.
Clean finish : It makes attractive pieces of furniture because of its aesthetic appeal. Its color range is broad in comparison to other types of wood, which can be used to give a desirable finish.
Can be easily carved : It can be easily worked with and makes ornate pieces of furniture and functional objects like drawers and cabinets.
Mulberry can be used to make small pieces of furniture, turned objects and fence posts.
DEODAR WOOD
building material, Deodar (Cedrus deodara) is very sturdy, rot-resistant, close-grained and can take up the deep polish to give a good finish. It is found in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.
Advantages of Deodar :-
Durable : It is long-lasting and sturdy and a fine wood.
Rot Resistant : Deodar is immune to decay by water and insects, giving it a long shelf life.
Absorbs High Polish : It absorbs color in varying degrees which makes it useful in making ornate objects and furniture.
In olden times, it was used to construct religious temples and landscaping. It is used to make railway carriages, railway sleepers, packing boxes and furniture.
JACKWOOD
Jackwood is compact, finely grained and easy to work with. It is found in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra.
Advantages of Jackwood :-
Even Grained : It is even grained which gives it a good finish.
Easy to work with : It can be easily carved and designed to create furniture and other articles.
Aesthetic Appeal : The beauty of the wood makes it a popular choice for making musical instruments and aesthetically appealing objects.
Jackwood is used to make furniture, door panels, cabinets and musical instruments.
OAK WOOD
Oak wood is best known for its durability due to its ability to withstand constant rough use. This type of wood comes in a variety of colours, from almost white to a dark brown. Therefore it is the most practical choice of wood for dining tables or furniture that is used on a daily basis. What’s more? You can use this versatile wood to match it to your interiors.
CHOOSE A HIGH-QUALITY IMAGE
If you start with a poor-quality image, you’re not going to get a good engraving. Anything blurry or pixelated won’t leave you with a sharp, detailed laser engraving. In addition to image quality, it’s best to select images with a lot of contrast. If an image is dark, the fine details will likely get lost. Contrast is going to help the laser create more detail. Using photo editing software to manipulate the contrast helps.
Getting the most out of a C02 laser when cutting, etching and engraving wood isn’t difficult, but like anything, it does require some effort. We provide in-house training for all laser system purchases. During training, customers are given valuable information and education about how to deliver precision with every application.
ENGRAVING
Engraving is done with a multitude of purposes – to leave a permanent tattoo or some 3D Graphical artworks on Wood, Acrylic, Aluminum, etc. However, given the enormous amount of different engraving solutions – choosing the right one for yourself or your business may become an overwhelming task.
Flat groove engraving
Flat groove engraving is a routing technique, which by removing the material leaves a flat area at the bottom of the sign face.
The depth of the cut can be tailored to individual needs.
The biggest advantage of the Flat groove engravings is that the sign can be painted quickly and easily.
Cast Acrylic Flat groove engraving comes with white matte finish.
V- groove engraving
This technique is widely used throughout the sign making industry mainly to create Door name plaques, tabletop signs, decorative items, etc.
Unlike Flat groove engraving, V groove comes with a fine line with a bottom tip – ideal both for graphics and lettering. The end-result engraved text can be painted or gold leafed.
V groove works wonders on materials like wood, plywood, MDF and other composites, plastics, etc.
CNC Laser engraving
The laser engraving sends laser pulses to make incisions – burns or cuts host of materials.
The laser head runs back and forth to produce clear cut and very detailed engravings.
The materials that work wonders for laser engraving are Acrylic, wood, Lexan, etc.
Depending on the final effect, we can control the direction, speed, depth and the size of the detailed engravings on different surface properties.
This computerized machine must have illustrator files for the laser to cut at a certain thickness and certain lines.
Different laser machines offer variety of depths to personalize and customize the suitable material. For example, dense materials can handle up to 0.020 deep engravings.
The laser beam removes selected areas of the subject material creating a desired effect or mark. There are two types of this marking.
As engraving is the common term for both, there is a slight difference between etching and marking.
Laser Marking
Laser marking is an umbrella term – it includes a whole bunch of laser applications. Marking creates discoloration and pattern (usually of a darker shade than the actual material) into the surface altering both appearance and the properties of the material.
Again, no inks are used – laser marking is permanent and eco-friendly.
Materials such as Wood, leather are ideal for marking – the desired effect depends just on the intensity of the laser beam.
Laser Etching
Etching, a subset of laser marking, is somewhere between laser marking and engraving.
Laser Etching distorts the material a permanent message leaving the surface raised above the rest. Unlike engraving,which can cut as deep as 0.125”, it only has 0.001” depth.
3D engraving
At a touch of a button, CNC milling can create 3D engravings or carvings. The Milling machine can engrave graphics, ornaments to a fine piece of artwork.
3D design process is practiced on materials such as Wood(of course), Acrylic and even metal.
The multi-spindle router creates squiggly, curved lines with a batch of extensive CNC tools which highly resembles manual carving – but done at less time and reduced manpower.
But there’s more than that. 3d engraving on the CNC routers is similar to bright-cut engraving with V-point engraving tools. The G-code language (the encrypted dialect of the CNC routers) interprets the vectors and raster images from the results obtained by the software. The V-point can vary to 360 degrees. The tools mimic the cutting and texturing motion of hand tools such as roulets and burnishers (Source: Wikipedia — engraving) by removing the material as the piece rotates on the 360 degrees rotary.
There are two kinds for 3D engraving: surface 3D engraving and Subsurface internal engraving.
3D engraving - surface and subsurface engraving
Surface 3D engraving is a broad term which is generally known as just 3D engraving. The fact it is computer milled, makes it ideal for creating a unique, highly textured Graphics and artworks.
The rotary machine can create 2D and, of course, 3d shapes, 3D contours, etc.
3D-Miller-door-Engraving / Subsurface 3D Laser Engraving
Have you ever wondered how they create 3D images inside Acrylic, let’s say?
Also referred as Vitrography, is quite effective despite what you might think.
But how do they get the image inside the glass like materials?
Well, you see, laser engraving system has a lense to focus the beam to a tight concentrated point.
So, due to the optically transparent features of Acrylic, this point can be in fact within the material. The laser beam thus creates internal micro fractures with the point size of 40-80μm(micrometers) and a bonus – no damage to the surface.
Getting more interesting, huh?
COLOR / PAINTING
1 – Au Naturale – this is unpainted cut and engraved bamboo. You can see how the laser changes the surface of the bamboo when engraving. By its nature, the laser burns the softer wood rings faster than the hard rings – leaving the a more pronounced wood texture than the surface.
2 – Paint before engraving. These were probably my favorite. Easiest prep, easiest clean up and cleanest lines of the bunch. Painted first – I had some lovely gold spray paint, so I applied three coats to an uncut piece of bamboo. It’s a little hard to see in photos, but it’s gorgeous. Shiny and metallic. I’m learning I really like spray paints, much better than acrylics at least. We then engraved away the areas that shouldn’t be painted.
3. Paint after engraving. The blue paint in engraved areas has an interesting weathered look. Paint after engraving – to keep a constant, I used the gold again. To add some variety, I used my favorite blue acrylic paint on some. The paint was applied to the engraved areas only – unengraved areas were protected by a layer of medium tack transfer tape applied before cutting.
4. Two toned! Blue acrylic paint in the engraved areas, gold sprayed before engraving.
Gold sprayed on gold paint. It would have been the same effect as if I had just sprayed a plain one! Getting a little crazy here; I wanted to see how it worked to combine the techniques. Theoretically, it should have lead to two neatly colored layers. The first layer was the gold spray paint. I did a second shot of gold paint post engraving on some; blue acrylic paint on others.
Things I learned:
Plethora of transfer tape
– Painting first is so much easier. Painting the uncut surface is neat and fast. It makes a cleaner line, and is much less work overall. Also, if you paint first, you don’t necessarily need transfer tape. Often times the soot cleans easily off of painted pieces, especially glossy paints. Peeling all those little transfer tape papers was about to make my eyes cross.
– I preferred the paint on the smooth areas. The paint simply wasn’t as vibrant in the engraved areas, where it was highly textured. (Another point in favor of painting it first!)
– Painting tiny laser cut bits with a brush is a PAIN. I had more paint on my fingers than the pieces, I swear. Also, excess paint went over the sides of the quilt patterns easily. When painting first, the original edges are cut away, leaving clean sides.
Stack of quilt block pendants - no paint, gold on gold and blue overpaint.
– Spray painting tiny laser cut bits was much more painless; the spray didn’t drip down the sides but rather speckled it. To keep them in place on the windy day outside, I stuck them to another bit of transfer tape (a method I used in Week 61: Hexagon Trivet) With both “paint after” methods, the sides did not stay clean.
– The two toned pieces were unique, but spraying gold on gold was a bit pointless
Learning wood engraving is a lot tougher than learning linocut. I for one often slip and make dents with the belly of the tool, these marks show up white in the final print. The print of an engraving can turn up quite different from what you imagined it would be while working on it, some tiny details might not turn up or have a lot less contrast than you initially thought. When working on a linocut, I feel the impression you have of the finished block is not too different from the final print.
The reason why I wanted to learn wood engraving is because of the amount of detail you can achieve using this technique. One can create a lot of grey (by making a lot of thin white strokes) and the overall image can have a softer tone, not as bold black and white as in a linocut print. I've seen wood engraving prints that look like pencil drawings, which is really quite fascinating! I'm nowhere near skilled enough to accomplish something like that, I still have a lot to learn. I do really enjoy this technique and I'm sure I won't stop working on it any time soon...
