How to engrave on a fancy wooden clipboard?

[mhodges]

Can I engrave on the back of a clipboard made of fancy striped wood? Some parents would like me to engrave the back of the clipboard with students’ names for a teacher gift. Any ideas on how I find out what settings to use to engrave since I cannot test on the very fancy clipboards.

[Tom_A]

Moved to Everything Else because Support can’t possibly advise you on products that they don’t make.

I engraved a clipboard once…

Father's Day Clipboard

Gabe’s Dad, Tony, is a basketball coach. So he often has a clipboard. This is what Gabe is about to give his Dad for Father’s Day… Front… Normal clipboard that will hold many papers. [image] It comes with a dowel in the clip. Back… Pure love. [image] That hole in the bottom is where the dowel goes which allows it to stand upright. The wood appears to be 1/3" crapboard (that’s a thing, right?). And because I tested the engrave on scrap a few times unmasked… I completely forgot to mask…

Basically you can engrave anything you feel like engraving. You might want to research the toxicity of the material if you’re unsure. But otherwise, have fun!

[deirdrebeth]

Find out what the VFC is made of - and you can either find settings for that particular wood by searching the fourm, or find other woods that are similar (https://www.advantagelumber.com/janka.htm) and then search the forum for that wood

You’ll probably end up sacrificing at least one VFC, but if you start with the highest speed/lowest power setting you can always do more if you don’t move the clipboard…doing less not so much

Also, if you can’t remove the clip from the board you’ll want to make a jig to raise it so it’s flat when the backside is up

[caribis2]

Assuming your VFC is actually wood and not a faux wood, start with one name and very low power and a very high speed. If you don’t see anything try again with more power or a slower speed. When you get to what you like remember that what you like is an accumulation of multiple engraves and not all of the glowforge settings are linear. So on the second name start with your final setting and add a little bit. When you work out what you like you can do all of the names on the subsequent VFCs at the same time.

Think of it as a haircut. You can always cut off more, but putting hair back on not so easy.

[evansd2]

If you know where they came from a product listing might give us some clues as to what it’s made of…

[mhodges]

Thank you for the advice!

[PrintToLaser]

If the clip is riveted on you may have to remove the tray and block the clipboard up to get within focus range.
Search here for engraving without the crumb tray for an understanding.

I think that’s a great idea for a teacher’s gift!