A Laser Engraver in Your Shop

I recently had the opportunity to work with a laser engraver and in all honesty, I'm very impressed and amazed at the number of different things you can engrave on and really how intuitive and how easy it is to send stuff from the computer to the laser. First off, let's talk about materials. I found that I can easily engrave on wood, glass, certain kinds of plastic, plexiglass, leather. This particular machine, frankly will engrave anything but a chunk of metal. In addition to engraving, it will also cut parts out. So you can use it kinda like a little CNC machine in order to cut shapes and put stuff together. So what I wanna do now is let you have a look at what it takes to send stuff to the laser and have it output for you. The way to think about this is that this machine is just a different form of printer. So here's, what's gonna happen, here at my computer, what I'm gonna do here is, I've got a word document open and yes, I can print right out of word. So I'm gonna input a name here, and a birthday, right there we're set to go. Now, when I go to print, I installed a driver for the epilogue laser here in my computer that lets me choose that from my dropdown menu. When I click on properties, that takes me to a box that lets me control exactly what the laser is gonna do. So what I know is I'm gonna send this to a tumbler, to a glass. So I change the speed parameters, that's based on information that I'm getting out of this owner's manual right here, so that information was given to me. I changed the power parameters, this is just like it sounds, what percentage of power am I using? What percentage of the available speed am I using? Down here, I'm choosing center engraving. So that's gonna help me locate it on the glass. You'll see more about that in just a second. Then I simply print this, now off it goes to the laser. There at the laser, the job itself shows up in the menu, here on the front of the laser, on the dashboard. Now I've got to do a couple things in order to get set up inside the laser itself. Like I said, I'm sending this to a glass tumbler, because it's in a regular shape, I'm gonna do what's called a manual focus on this. So in order to do that, I've added this little kinda like a feeler gauge. And that just goes on there temporarily using the controls here on the dashboard. I bring this up, until it just kisses the bottom of that feeler gauge, right there. What that does, is it puts that surface at the correct distance, the focal point of the laser itself. Now that comes off. The next thing I need to do is make sure that the image is gonna go in the right spot on the glass. So by pushing another set of buttons, I can disable the motors that control the position of the laser and allow me to manually control it. So there's a little pointer, you see the red dot, that's showing me where the laser is gonna hit. I've got the center of the image already located on the glass. So I manually position it for that. Now you see this cradle I've got here, of course that's shot made. You're gonna have to do for a regular objects like this, some kinda device to hold them in place, get them where you want them. So that's all set. Now I tell the laser, that's a home position and we're set to go there, peel the tape off. Now, back at the dashboard, all I have to do is push the go button and the job is gonna start running and etching itself into the glass. You'll hear a noise in the background here, that's an exhaust fan that's venting any fumes out of my shot. So, I think we're set to go. Well, that's it that ran the job for us. Let's see what we got. Hopefully I spelled everything right. All right. If I had more of these to do, I could have that cradle maybe taped down to the bed so it would stay in place. Put another glass in, I don't send for my computer on round two. I just keep pushing the go button here on the dashboard. And there I can run piece after piece after piece. Now I wanna change the setup in this case, I ran text. Next thing I wanna show you is sending some artwork to the laser and I'm gonna do some engraving on a raised panel door I've got. In this case, it's just a little bit different. I've got an image here on my screen and in order to put it on the race panel, the first thing I'm gonna do is rotate that image left so it works out correctly in the orientation I've got on the panel. Then I come back again to my print commands. There's the epilogue laser, I go to printer setup. Now, in this case, I'm gonna send this to a piece of wood. So my settings are just a little bit different. Have a look at the owner's manual and change my parameters. Now on that irregular shaped object, I did a manual focus. This time I'm gonna do an autofocus because this is a nice flat plane of wood. And you'll see the machine come up and just on its own, find the right focal length. And again, we are center engraving, press the print command and off it goes to the laser. Now, when I press the go button we're gonna put a cool looking horse right there in the middle of that Alder raised panel. Now, when I press the go button in this case, it's gonna autofocus. So it comes up until it hits the plunger that using the plunger it's gonna determine the focal point of that laser. Once it's set, it's gonna start to burn and then I'll turn the exhaust fan on. Well, there's my image, engraved onto that nice piece of Alder that nice raised panel door. So hopefully like me, what you're getting out of this, is just to see the simplicity of just how incredibly easy it is to set the artwork or the text up and send it to this big printer which in this case, is a laser engraver. Pretty simple to use, pretty intuitive.