Clear Plastic Clipboard

wcwoodturning · March 25, 2018, 10:17pm

So, I’m in the Navy and I’m currently working on my IDW pin. For the civilians reading this it’s a “Information Dominance Warfare” pin. It denotes I have in-depth knowledge of the cyber warfare field. Anyway, I’ve gen’d up this clipboard using 1000/30/225. Would you have used different settings or done anything different? TIA!

cynd11 · March 25, 2018, 10:35pm

I’d say it’s pretty near perfect already!

Jules · March 25, 2018, 10:37pm

Turned out fine!
(If that’s acrylic, you could have gone up to Full Power with it at that speed to get a deeper engrave, but it looks fine like it is.)

wcwoodturning · March 25, 2018, 10:38pm

I bought it at Walmart. I have no idea what it’s made of.

Jules · March 25, 2018, 10:47pm

It’s probably acrylic.

(But just to be on the safe side, and avoid the possibility of damage from chlorine gas being released while burning the plastic, in the future, you might want to make sure to test unknown plastics before lasering.)

Some plastics are killers. There are a couple of tests you can run to reduce (but not eliminate) risk. Check out the writeups on lines 29-32 in the matrix below.

boringkajj · March 25, 2018, 10:53pm

Let me know any particular settings you find on the EIDWS engrave. I’m on Corry Station and I have a bunch of those I need to make in a variety of woods/plastic/leather/etc… Thanks.

wcwoodturning · March 25, 2018, 11:02pm

I’m on Corry too. Compound 3.

boringkajj · March 25, 2018, 11:17pm

Yep…I’m the Director of Navy COOL program. Bldg 502 room 104e. Drop by some time and we can chat on what we’ve burned so far. I’ve done a lot of test prints for the XO lately. I’m in San Diego this week.

Best regards,
Keith

msdnobles719 · December 24, 2019, 2:02am

Did you take the metal piece off?

wcwoodturning · February 16, 2020, 4:12pm

I did not. I flipped it over so that the clip was facing down with custom made supports to keep it level and engraved the back so that the front wasn’t going to affect any writing that may be done in the future.

tclear01 · February 22, 2020, 8:50pm

Go Navy! If you’re looking to make the engraving pop more, you can increase the depth and then fill it with acrylic paint (silver/gold depending on E/O).

Similarly, if you plan on spending a decent amount of time in red light you can add a nice little edge lighting LED that will make the engraving light up pretty nicely!