All leather pretty much Engraves and Scores at the same settings, the only issue becomes cutting completely through it. If you are not going to use Proofgrade leather, you don’t want to use the Proofgrade settings, since those are set up for masking on the material.
We’re not supposed to discuss actual settings outside of the Beyond the Manual section, so just do a quick search there and you’ll find some good starter settings.
Cutting through is a different animal because of the fibrous nature of veg-tanned leather. There is a ton of charring because of the air introduced, and it’s very hard to burn all the way through. (Lasers do not work in air pockets). Shave or slick down the back of the veg-tanned before cutting and it’s much easier to process. (Tokonole works very well.) And for different weight leathers, you will want to run a few tests.
One word of warning…do not use fake or faux leathers in this machine, you can easily damage it. (If you are buying hides, that’s not a problem, but watch how they’re tanned. Chrome tanned (most leather) is not as healthy to use with a laser.)
I mask everything I put on the laser in fact I mask both sides because it helps keep the material flat. Each piece is placed in the glowforge masked for engraving first and cutting second on all in one Go Button push. I engrave at 600/60 for a nice deep engrave. Cutting is 150/Full Power. Until recently this has cut through easily and consistently. In the last few months I’ve had an increasingly bigger issue getting a full cut on my 8/9oz. veg tanned no matter what focus height I set.
Speaking generally I still use the Glowforge in this way for every single project I do. I just built a few new projects that feature really involved original artwork.
Have you tried cleaning all of the lenses? I have found that once it begins having trouble cutting all of the way through cleaning the lenses gets it back to where it needs to be …
Thanks for the info, BTW, getting ready to do a run of masks for myself and the people I work with in the prison!
Sorry for reviving an old thread (I don’t understand why people get upset about that at all… but I digress)
I have a question about the tooling examples you showed here: Did you wet the leather before tooling in these examples? Did you use heated or cold tools? I am just beginning the leather adventure, and I really like these examples as practice.
Watch some Youtube videos for beginning leather tooling, that will be the most helpful. But the short answer is I wet the leather, let it sit for 5 or 8 min and then begin hammering with room-temp tools and a maul I bought at Tandy Leather.
