Best setting for engraving slate

Hi Guys,
Can anyone please suggest best setting for engraving of slate, doing my first project and finding it hard to establish what I’m after on the grey slate, I’m using red and black 80watt machine.

Regards to all Ray M

It will vary slightly on what you are engraving, lines versus large text, versus an image. But for reference I use 10000mm/min at 40% power on a 50Watt for an imported image. So you might want to work around those numbers. It doesn’t take much power to engrave slate. Too much power seems to give it a yellow tinge. Less is better. Best trick is to create some contrast by either coating with a poly finish first or some people have rubbed a small amount of thin machine oil (3 in 1) if it’s going to be used outside.

Hope that helps,

David

We use machine oil (3-in1) for contrast and protection even if used inside.

The nice thing about oil is that it will normalise and look natural without gloss or shine after a day.

I oil after engraving, not before.

Settings: high dpi, 250mm/sec @60%

2 Likes

Thank you David for you reply, I just needed a rough guidance & it’s much appreciated, there’s certainly lot to learn to perfect a task on these lasers. I enjoy experimenting and usually get a good outcome, I’ve tried a few gessum settings and I wasn’t impressed.
I’ll certainly give your method a shot.
Cheers my friend.
Ray

Thank you bo for the advice, I’ll certainly try your method too, there’s so much variation with using lasers, but I enjoy the challenge.
Keep well.
Cheers
Ray.

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