Materials supported question

@dan Can you laser engrave Linoleum for block printing?

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Since “Linoleum” is a generic description (like having a “Coke”), you will need to get the manufacturer’s material sheet.

If you see an reference to Chlorine (Chloro-whatever), that could be a problem. Also, other materials that make up “Linoleum” may be laser unfriendly (melts, gases given off and such).

EDIT: Looks promising -

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There definitely are laser-rated linoleums (Inventables says theirs is laser-safe, for instance). But over the decades the original stuff has largely been superseded by “vinyl flooring”, which is not a good idea at all.

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You might try search the forum for “lino” or “linoleum” or “stamp” as there have been several discussions on this topic.

This topic has a couple of links to materials in it:

And this thread has a lot of discussion on linoleum materials too:

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True Linoleum is made of organic materials can be safely lasered. The problem is, the vast majority of stuff you find called “linoleum” now is really polyvinyl chloride and it is decidedly a very bad idea to stick it in a laser. One biggest difference will be the color will go all the way through true linoleum and it will cost a heck heck of a lot more than the vinyl stuff.

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Yes I was thinking about artit Lino (battleship gray lino) which is available unmounted or mounted to MDF

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My rule of thumb is if I buy it from a laser materials shop I feel good about throwing it in, if not I make sure I know exactly what I have and check the msds.

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Sounds like the inventibles stuff I used with @joe. Worked great (mounted)

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I purchased some unmounted linoleum. I’ll let you know how it engraves.

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Check out Marmoleum, we used it for bathrooms since it’s made out of natural materials. Here’s the MSDS.

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Thanks Joe - the speedball stuff is made for block printing so ideally its what id like to use

We don’t offer any right now, but as others have noted, you may find some suppliers who can provide laser-compatible linoleum.

I was looking to see if this question was answered and found this thread. I’m looking into cutting Linoleum, and a great source of unmounted and mounted linoleum is McClain’s. The description of their material is pretty straightforward, and explicitly states it has no PVCs: “linseed oil, rosin, wood flour and limestone pressed onto a jute backing.”

McClain’s is a great source, too, because they will cut blocks to your specifications, which is super helpful if you don’t have a table saw or similar cutting equipment.

You can get it mounted on MDF, which seems to be an acceptable laser material, too? I was thinking given how one carves mounted linoleum for printing, exercising scoring control on a mounted piece of linoleum to outline a design and then carving away the unused portion would be potential preferable to cutting unmounted linoleum and mounting it, as all the smaller portions of what you wanted in your design would remain in place in the mounted version.

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Good to know! I don’t think we had a source for this yet. :grinning:

Thanks Glenn - also I looked into regular battleship grey Lino from speedball - the speedball site has full mdfs sheets and it looks like the grey Lino should perfect- now all we need is the settings

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I just received a few sheets of Linoleum (unmounted) from Inventables (allegedly laser-friendly). Has anyone from this thread got suggesting settings to engrave successfully?

Thanks!

I have engraved multiple of the mounted linoleum from them and it engraved great…

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That’s great to hear, Henry! Do you happen to recall the speed/power settings you used on the engrave for it? I’m hoping to sacrifice as little of it as I can to power-level experimentation to get just the right amount of material removal to make stamp faces, so I thought I’d ask around to see if anyone else had a good starting point set of settings to use.

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Pretty sure I just used the generic Proofgrade Maple Ply settings…

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