Hi All - I continue to practice and learn the software and Ortur. I setup an engraving to carve lettering on both sides of a piece of walnut. I burned the first side, edited the name in LB, turned the wood over and started the job.
I have watched several videos and have been testing a lot over the past week. I am trying to understand cause and effect of different settings. With this one I figured it would produce about the same on both sides. I am hoping someone can give me some ideas as to why the difference in burn from one side to the other. TIA
Did you treat the surfaces in any way prior to burning? Any sanding or spray?
Also, is this a piece of raw walnut or was this pre-finished? It seems from how it looks that it might be pre-finished but can’t tell from the picture.
What I have found is that any variation in material can result in different results. The laser itself I’ve found can behave differently over time but not with nearly the same effect as the material itself. I have found this especially true with any chemically treated porous material like wood.
Even in your example the y on the backside looks closer to the burn on the front side.
Some of the material factors that I’ve seen affect burn:
inherent wood grain variations. Certain areas of wood will burn differently than others. That’s especially true if you’re burning composites of multiple species.
I’ve seen wood from craft stores that look like they’ve been soak treated in some sort of chemical. They burn very inconsistenly
surface finishes. If these are done very consistently they can result in predictable results but then you get variation between batches
I’ve had the most consistent results with bare untreated wood showing little knotting or surface variation. Similarly, very consistent composite materials like MDF or paper will burn predictably.
Hi - Untreated sanded walnut. Your right the Y matches perfectly with the other side. The two L’s are on the same grain color as the Y yet completely different.
I did a fill and line. I need to take a look at the line numbers as it carved a bit but no color.
I took a closer zoomed in look after reading that this was a fill and line and noticed that the line isn’t aligned to the fill.
Do you have a handle on what’s going on there?
