Daniel from D Taylor Woodworking makes bespoke furniture. A customer had commissioned a desk made from maple. They wanted a quote engraved it to make it extra special and Daniel asked if I could help.

Will the wood fit the laser?

Whenever a customer asks about projects that sound big, I always ask what size the pieces are to be cut or engraved.

My machine bed is 1200 x 800mm and even although it’s a good size, it can still be too small for certain jobs. It’s always best to manage expectations at the start of discussions rather than wasting a customer’s time and mine discussing a project that doesn’t suit the machine.

Daniel told me that the piece to be engraved was a thin strip of maple that would be build into the desk after engraving. It would fit the laser without any problem.

Setting up the artwork

Daniel sent a vector file with the artwork text scaled to fit the maple fillet to be built into the fascia of the desk. It was perfect and ready to use.

Vector files are necessary for laser cutting but also work very well for raster (fill in) engraving. The area within the vector lines can be engraved.

Working with maple

When the wood was prepared, Daniel brought it to the workshop for engraving.

Maple a beautiful pale wood, a bit like sycamore. We got a sharp contrast between the engraved and unengraved areas, and a good 3D effect in the text depth. When engraved wood is finished with varnish, it accentuates these features, making engraved areas look even darker, which is exactly what Daniel wanted.

Personalised desk

Daniel sent me some pictures when it was finished. He was really pleased with it!

He had initially enquired about having the artwork below the text engraved, but it was very detailed. Because of the effect that Daniel wanted to create, he decided that print would work better. This was a good decision as the work surface would remain flat. It would have been textured if engraved.

Have you got a product you’d like to develop but aren’t sure how? Contact us or ask for a quote.

When Jessica emailed me the vector artwork for her Geo Festive decoration, I knew it was going to be a challenge! The stag isn’t as chunky a design as Geo Bear and Geo Seahorse.

Vulnerable parts of a design

Three of the stag’s legs and its antlers are long and thin. This makes them vulnerable to breakage. After making a prototype, I knew that the legs would be ok, but the antlers were still too fragile. The design worked in print, but when cut from plywood, they were too fine.

I advised Jessica had to beef up the antlers and it made a big difference to the look of the decorations. She agreed that we should make the decoration a bit bigger than the bear and seahorse as it was less chunky. That helped a bit too.

What can go wrong?

Lots of things can go wrong when cutting fragile shapes, especially when the edges are made up of lots of straight lines as Jessica’s decorations are.

When the laser cuts, it accelerates away from corners and decelerates towards them in preparation for the turn. When you’re cutting circles, there are no corners, and the laser head sweeps round at the same speed. When there are lots of angles and the laser slows down for each one.

The general rule of thumb with laser cutting is that you cut as fast as possible at as low a power setting as possible for a clean cut through. Even if the laser power is perfect when the machine speed is constant, it can be overpowering for the same material at a slower speed. As a result, there can be burning on the backs of the items as there’s enough time for the material to catch fire! 

This meant that I had to fine tune the machine settings very carefully. I used a few sheets to complete the order. As different sheets of plywood vary in thickness, I had to tweak the machine settings for each sheet. Slightly thinner or marginally thicker sheets had to be cut slightly faster or slower respectively to compensate. It was a fine balance, but necessary to achieve a high product quality.

Balancing the decorations

Jessica wanted the stag to hang in a ‘prancing‘ position rather than sitting horizontally. After making several prototypes, I found the sweet spot. Moving the hole slightly to the left or right affected the angle significantly.

Geo Festive was the most difficult of Jessica’s decorations to find the balance point for the hole for. The bear and seahorse have more obvious centres of gravity and tweaks to hole location had a less dramatic impact.

Have you got a product you’d like to develop but aren’t sure how? Contact us or ask for a quote.

Earlier this year, Jessica Taylor commissioned her Geometric Bear and Geometric Seahorse designs as laser cut decorations made from 3mm laser plywood. Jessica and her customers loved them, so she decided to commission her Geometric Festive stag design as Christmas decorations.

Is artwork for print suitable for laser cutting?

Not always. Each project needs to be taken on a case by case basis. It depends on how the artwork has been created. If the effects required from printing and laser cutting are very different, then different artwork files may be required.

At first glance, all three pieces of Jessica’s artwork were perfect vector files. But on closer inspection, they weren’t. Here’s why.

All the printed lines had been created as rectangles of the right thickness to be printed like the chef  in The Edible Alchemist’s logo. Hairline lines would have been too fine for the printed effect that Jessica wanted. But laser cutting and engraving needs hairlines.

In the picture above, you can see how much thicker the printed lines of the whale are in comparison with the engraved detail on the deer and bear decorations.

What would happen if the artwork wasn’t adapted?

If I laser cut and engraved using the printed artwork, all the lines have been engraved as two lines in parallel as you can see in the geo bear artwork above.

Also, there would have been lots of burning on the backs of the items  as only one cut is necessary to get through 3mm laser ply, not two.

Unnecessary cuts degrade product quality and add to production time. This means you get a poorer quality product at a higher price!

How Jessica tweaked her artwork

I explained to Jessica that I needed all the lines to be thin lines only, not rectangles.

All the lines to be engraved would be vector engraved. Product outlines had to be one complete hairline surrounding the shape so the products would be cut out completely in one continuous line. Cut out areas like between the front knees should be the same to maximise product quality.

Have you got a product you’d like to develop but aren’t sure how? Contact us or ask for a quote.