Good afternoon,
Has anyone tried to engrave a gavel and dock with the machine? This will be my first and I’m a little cautious
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What are the dimensions of the various parts?
Gavel head diameter, and length?
Gavel base height?
If any of them are over 1.8" or so, you’re out of luck.
Both about 1 inch thick. The diameter of the round is about 5 inches. Wants me to add name on gavel handle with Masonic Square and compass on round.
Lamar M. Ware
Does the handle come out of the gavel head? If not there may be some pretty big issues to overcome.
Yes it does. The Gavel head unscrews.
Lamar M. Ware
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Does the bottom of the disc have the same finish as the top? If it does, it would be a good place to experiment with settings. You could always cover it with felt when done. If not, I’d start with engrave settings for the wood found in Beyond the Manual. Note that pure engraves can get pretty deep, so if that is not what you want start with less power, more speed and do multiple passes WITHOUT MOVING THE DISC BETWEEN PASSES. The finish and any stain probably won’t make a huge difference.
As for the handle I’d really want to find another piece of something, anything that will take an engrave, with the same curves. The laser beam will only be truly focused on a small part of it. The good thing is wood is fairly forgiving. So you are left between very tiny letters for the judge’s name, ones that aren’t a perfectly clean engrave, or building an jig where you can do an indexed rotate of the handle.
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Got it. Great idea the bottom is the same finish as the top, I’ll try that. So you think it might be an issue putting the name on the handle.
Lamar M. Ware
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The laser beam is cone shaped. The finest detail and maximum power is at the focal point (think the pinch point of an hour glass.) The handle is curved sharply side to side and more gently top to bottom. The further away the material is from the focal point you get a wider beam with the power spread over more area. Sometimes you do this on purpose, especially on acrylic, you can search on defocused if you’re curious. Working in your favor is that it is wood, but yes you could run into issues depending on how large you make the letters of the name.
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if you have the time for it, you can use a piece of dowel or a round wooden stir-spoon handle to test and play with how the lettering falls on a curved object.
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I’m assuming the brass band around the head is real metal, so no real good option there for laser, but you might could check out laserable 2-color acrylic sheet.
Of course, even a quarter sheet of this stuff would be enough to make every member his own gavel, but you would have plenty of practice material.
If your handle unscrews then you should be able to engrave successfully on that. It is a matter of a fixture/jig that holds it up to within the focus area without the crumb tray. Putting the handle on the crumb tray would make it too high.
This might give you ideas. You could rig up a jig with the Gflowforge.
Here is something I whipped up in cardboard. It is the height of the crumb tray. The 1/2 circle is set to half the height of the tube you are going to engrave. Just make it a bit deeper to get the top of the gavel handle within the range of the laser.
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Not Engraving brass band. Just the wood handle.
understood. I just meant that traditionally it’s the brass band that’s engraved, but that wouldn’t be a GF option and the acrylic would be a possibility.
Thanks!
Lamar M. Ware