Help engraving a pegdoll

Hello everyone! I’m new to the laser world. I make pegdolls for a living and I will like to make their faces in my glowforge. They are 7/8 inches in thickness. They head are round (I attached a picture). I don’t know the material, but it hard wood! I know the glowforge doesn’t do any rotary stuff, but I only want to engrave the features of their faces. I tried and I completely failed. Anyone can help me with the setting and ideas? Thank you!

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That will take a few special preparations…you will need to remove the tray and create a jig to hold the dolls, so that you can engrave the faces correctly.

The jig will need to consist of a couple of boxes…one will need to be 7/8" tall, with a cutout of the doll shape in it. (Just a rectangle that the doll fits in snugly will do.)

The box for the jig needs to extend at least an inch out in all directions around the hole for the doll, it will give the targeting laser something to land on.

The second box or prop needs to be 1/2" thick, and you can set the jig on top of it. Drop the doll into the hole and you can then place and align your engraving on the face. Click on the top jig with the Set Focus tool, then place the engraving.

Engrave one doll, then remove the doll (without shifting the jig…tape it down if necessary) and you can drop in the next doll for engraving.

That should work.

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You’ll need to take out the crumb tray and put something down about 3/4" thick before you put the doll down. (A jig of some sort would help both with positioning and keeping it steady.)

Since the head is curved, what I would try to do to deal with focus is split the difference. Maybe put a block next to the head that’s slightly shorter than the high point of the “face” and use THAT to set focus. That would give you a better range than just focusing on the top and hoping for the best. There IS a little leeway with focus, but you’d need to experiment.

As long as you can live with a little variance in the faces, that SHOULD work. (The same also should go for any clothing details you might want to add …)

As far as settings go, start with one of the hardwood settings and see what you get. Then you can adjust the speed and/or power to get the look you want.

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(I think I need to type faster…)

6 Likes

hey did this end up working out?
im in the same boat and trying to save a little time.