I have an inexpensive 5W diode laser engraver. I enjoy art and so I’ve tried to find ways to create artistic work with the machine. While I was experimenting, I gave away a few of my pieces. The other day I had lunch with a coworker who asked if I had any left. I didn’t, but I offered to make her one. So, I asked what her interest were and this is my journey of setting out to make one.
I recently built a small privacy fence and I had some left of scraps of cedar that are 5.5 inches wide by 12 to 18 inches long and about half an inch thick. I’ve decided to try to engrave on this material.
One idea the coworker game we was an interested in Pathfinder. To experiment I grabbed some images for that. I probably won’t be able to show the actual art I used for the project due to copyright concerns. It’s probably fair use to create a one-off work for a friend but it probably crosses a line if I post about it on this page. So, here’s an image that’s inspired by the logo I found.
I resized the image to around 500px because my scrap wood piece is 5.5” wide. I think I’ve gotten good results from 1-bit images at around 100 pixels per inch so I’m going with that size. The scrap wood I have is different than anything I’ve used before though so it will likely behave a bit differently.
The laser engraving experiments that I like the best were images with a dithered look. So, I converted the original image to a 1-bit dithered image.
This is as far as I’ve gotten so far. The next step is to put this on an SD card, put the piece of cedar into the laser engraver, and burn it. Add a comment below to be notified when I do the actual engraving.
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