Engraving on maple plywood

What I learned from this engraving is to possibly cut first and ignore the engraving, then remove the masking and engrave only - ignoring the cut. When I first engraved this, much of the detail was lost on the masking paper. In this case, I removed the masking and engraved again at half the power and the results are what you see. I’m happy with this but next time I’ll try as stated - cut / no engrave , remove paper and engrave / no cut. We will see.
Question: does anyone treat the engraving ? I welcome comments, thanks.

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I pretty much always remove the masking before engraving on plywood. And I also lower the power to around 80. And if there are cuts, since you’re using proof grade, any burning cleans right off with alcohol.

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I use sealer on anything I consider a final thing. Even on the engraves it will help prevent scaling of the burn//color.
I give them a some brisk back and forth sweeps with a 4 inch paint brush to remove any apparent loose debris and seal like any other wood.

Also worth sweeping plastics that have been engraved to eliminate loose particles. Do this over a table and you will be surprised how much debris was just sort of sitting in the slots.

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I think it looks marvelous!

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That is one of the best photo engraves I’ve seen on here. Wow.

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Cute picture and it looks great!

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Thanks, I’m going to try that next engrave

Thank you for the tips - it seems so obvious as I read your comments and this is the value of this forum as sometimes we don’t see the forest for the trees, thanks.

I’ve been using non-proofgrade for engraving (1/2" Baltic Birch). I’ve tried masking it and found it doesn’t look as good because you lose the very light details. For this one I cut it on a table saw after because it was almost the size of the crumb tray and I didn’t want to deal with any charring. I also sanded around the engraving to remove the yellowing.

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Wow, it is beautiful. I was just visiting a site that had white birch - really like the color of the white areas and the detail - thanks Can I ask what your settings were?

800 speed, vary power at 1 - full power, 225 lines per inch, 1 pass

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