I am hoping somebody can help me know if what I want to do is ok. My child has a project for art school where they need make some blocks for block printing. They currently are dealing with a wrist issue and are not able to cut the blocks by hand and so their professor suggested they try laser engraving the blocks. They want do so something around 14x10.5”. I have read pine is not good for the application and am having trouble sourcing a hardwood like maple in right size quick enough. I have watched some videos and plywood seems to be a popular choice. How do I know if a plywood is ok for engraving? I do not want to damage myself or the machine. I usually use Columbia plywood panels from HD but what I was reading was thicker plywood would be better. Any suggestions on what to use for this application or how to make sure what I use is safe. Thank you.
You could use the plywood you already have and stack/glue a couple layers together. Which material is best depends on the artwork your daughter wants to make (fine lines or not, etc) . Cutting out a thin layer and gluing the pieces to another layer will also be faster than engraving.
Thank you both. They want to do 3 layers layers with different colors so I would need to make sure everything lined up. Any ideas on best way to do that? Thank you again!
If you cut the three layers from identically-sized sheets, and use a jig to locate them on the bed, you can then position them against a corner of the backing sheet and use that as the template to lay out the pieces for glueing.
You’d want to lay out all three layers in your design app so that they will print in the same location. You could either make each layer a different color and ignore the ones you don’t want for each print or, preferably, if there are no overlapping components, even cut all three from the same sheet and just use the same template for positioning on each backing sheet.
You could even score the layer number onto each part to help choosing which ones get attached to each backing sheet. Obviously you’d want to be printing them in a way that the labeled side would be the one glued to the backing plate.
It doesn’t look great because of the variation in grain density, but for block printing that doesn’t matter.
I still stand by what I said about engraving that deep over such a large area being hard on the machine. The majority of the 14x10.5" surface would have to be removed, that’s going to take a long time.