I am using a NEJE Master 2 and I’d like to make a rubber stamp. Very simple. Just for my adress, e.g. name, street, place, phone, 3 or 4 lines).
I habe a print template. It’s an .png, 600 pdi and I want the rubber stamp to have about 5 cm lenght. It works so far.
I tried it several times with different settings, but the second line with the adress ist alway lower in the rubber than the name so when I stamp, the name is fine, the last line also, but the line in between does not reach the paper much and therefor not readable. It’s lower. How can I optimize that?
My settings:
speed: 30
power: 80%
intervall: 0,070
runs: 10 (to get it deeper)
material: foam rubber
laser: NEJE Master 2
I haven’t done this but willing to explore with you.
Do you have any sense of why the middle line is lower? Is the material retracting there? Or are you also burning the surface layer?
Are you using air assist for your cutting?
My first guess would be that with your current cut settings the material is melting and not just vaporizing. The melting is causing the material to retract or distort. The middle layer could be more affected because there is less support material or more material has distorted above and below that layer.
If that’s the case I would think lower power or faster settings with air assist (for rapid cooling) would alleviate some of this.
This shouldn’t be directly related but have you also looked at using the ramp option in the advanced tab of a fill layer? It’s designed to provide relief at the edges of a stamp.
Can you provide a good quality photo of the stamp showing the issue?
I don’t use a layer. It’s an importet image I use.
The material is specially made for rubber stamps.
Yes, I use air assist.
When I lower power or fasten speed it doesn’t cut deep enough into the material. Anyway I need to repeat the cutting serveral times to get enough depth.
Are you able to share the image? If the image is not carefully constructed and has no noise I could see it potentially interfering with the stamp.
If the problem is caused by material retraction there may be no way around it. Or find a way to keep the material cooler. Not 100% sure if that’s the issue at this point.
I work a lot with extruded foam. The material will retract from the laser beam especially when it’s not as focused and at depth. It doesn’t tend to collapse the surface height but I could see this happening if I was using this as a stamp. I’m not certain your foam rubber would behave exactly the same way but I imagine some of the behavior is similar.
Question, if you were to cut cleanly through the stamp, is kerf wider at top of material or at bottom of material?
Image looks mostly fine. Perhaps a little noisy at the edges. Is it both inner lines that’s showing the problem? Or just one? Or does it gradually get worse the closer to the center?
What size is the stamp that you make?
What image mode are you using?
I suggest you consider trying this with a vector design. Don’t know where you created this but LightBurn can load a variety of vector formats. Or this would be easy enough to recreate in LightBurn.
I don’t imagine this will make a big difference but any unnecessary firing of the laser might be causing further material retraction. This will also give you potentially more control of settings to try.
Based on this I do suspect you’re getting material retraction. More air, less power, more passes I suspect will remedy what you’re seeing. You may be able to even out the stresses if you increase the outer border as well. Might result in all of the areas being equally retracted.
One other thing I’m thinking is that it’s the smaller font size that’s the problem. The material is retracting more because of the finer detail of the smaller size. I suspect you’re having the issue with the bottom line as well but the whole stamp gets angled when pressed so it’s not as noticeable.
I found a video in which they say, that for my device (NEJE Master 2) which has low power, the laser rubber sheet doesn’t work for a stamp. This was your first thought, too. Just as you said, I should use an extruded foam!
I now ordered the new material and then I will see!
Thank you so much for spending your time in order to help me!
It may still be possible to get good results if you’ve been able to engrave it. I suggest using a vector format and possibly doing a line operation first. Then slowly removing additional material with multiple passes.
I’m curious what the new material would be like. The extruded foam I use wouldn’t work well for a stamp.
