Engrave-a-holic

I am making a series of small round boxes and have been playing around with different woods to use. Some are good. Some are not! Here are a few of the results:


This is on Hard Maple. Turned out great after two passes.


This is red cedar. straight out of the forge it looks pretty good, but…

After wiping away a lot of the gunk away with a baby wipe, it really looks nice. Still wet in this image.

Here it is nice and dry. Love Red Cedar!

This is a piece I did on 1/4" Bloodwood. I used low settings with a single path and wiped it clean with a baby wipe. I think a second pass on this wood would make for a killer engrave. The grain of the wood really adds some great texture and character.

Thanks for looking! I have yet to get good about writing down all of the particular settings I am using. Gotta work on that. lol

Happy Forging!

Scott Daniel

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The maple looks really great.

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That red cedar looks beautiful. I’m sold.

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Those are amazing you did a wonderful job.

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These are gorgeous. Are you creating your own depth files?

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I wish I was good enough to do that. I am using images I found in a search.

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If you use it, go super light on the settings. 50 power at 500 speed almost went through the whole 3/16"!

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Thank you!

I really like the way the red cedar turned out. I want to make some now. :grin:

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I played with 3D engrave for a spell. So much so (about 2 dozen or more) that I had to clean the machine twice before I moved on to other things.

A good resource is available at Home Depot in their wood floor department. The little 4x4 samples are free and I had been getting a few samples each time I went.

Just make sure you are getting the wooden floor samples, not one of the vinyls.
Not a great candidate for finished projects, but a free resource to allow playing with your files until they look good enough to put the good wood under the laser.
(NOTE: Old wooden fan blades are also nice to work with - MDF centers on the wood ones can make them harder to cut than real wood, but they are also another freebie if you have been like me and replaced fans over the years and hoarded the blades)

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Damn, that cedar looks awesome.

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Made me look.
Yeah it is awesome.

I worked with some cedar but the grain seemed to resist and got ridges all through the design.
Looks like I need to go find some Red Cedar.

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I boosted the lpi up to 450. Super smooth on this Red Cedar. Has a great smell to it as well!

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Man you got that sculpting with light down. :sunglasses:

If you are smelling the cedar while engraving you have an exhaust leak…

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The smell is both before and after. Not during. My cheap venting is still holding up! lol

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The scent of cedar is very pleasant - unless you are a moth…

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Oooooh, these are beautiful!

It’s nice to have the settings, but we’re only supposed to talk about non-PG settings in Beyond the Manual. For some reason, some people don’t like to put their posts there (even though it’s my favorite section!), so if you share their feelings you can just post your settings there with the type of wood you used them on, and then link to them from here. :slight_smile:

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Great call! Thank you!

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My experience with bloodwood was many years ago that someone had a piece that was a shelf in his boat that had to come out as the space was renovated. It was likely many years old so that probably affected my experience.

The wood that I got was a dark brown but fresh cuts were gorgeous and nearly as red as fresh blood, but after a week or so the new cuts were the color of actual blood that was that old which I found very disappointing.

Perhaps others here would have a way to keep the fresh color fresh.

Ohmygosh, these are some of the best 3D engraves I’ve seen!

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