Greetings good people! It has been a day of trial and error for us but we finally found success with both cutting and engraving aluminum.

If you suffer the entire first video you will step through our succession of misfires that ends in perfectly executed cuts of medium/regular weight foil as well as the heavy duty foil. I filmed it in real time because there are folks here who want to learn from our mistakes. If you’re not among them you may be bored.

The issue with engraving metal for the past few days has been the ghosting of lettering when the laser head fires on both the left and right movements. It was fine going from left to right but until Cameron really fine tuned the calibrations in LightBurn that he was able to achieve clarity with the lettering in the bidirectional mode. That is in the second video which is shorter.

For anyone just wanting the bottom line on the aluminum cut, here ya go.

And here is the anodized aluminum engraving of my contact card. We are interested to see what is achievable in stainless steel (raw/uncoated) and will share that when we have it.

You may have seen the lion we did on scratch paper before Cameron had resolved the jittering issues via calibrations in LightBurn. If not, here he is.

I know we should do (and will, eventually) a side by side comparison of the same lion post calibration, but I was eager to try the multi colored scratch paper tonight before calling it a day.

I just grabbed a random image for this engraving. Cameron explained that one of the strengths of the diode is how tiny the pinpoint of the laser is. The smaller the point the more detail you can get. I’d like to do a blueprint/mechanical drawing and a map like the ones we’ve done in layered wood to get a better idea of just how precise the laser is but it was getting late so we just did this butterfly. The concept for a final project is to mount the engraving to wood, spray it with a matte clear coat, then use an offset sheet of acrylic with stainless steel steel spacers (which, now that I think of it, could be engraved for a really custom piece…hmmm) to mount to a wall. I hope to put a piece like that together soon.

For now, I’m off to start a new art quilt with those strips we cut last week!

Stay safe out there this holiday and give your pets some extra love!

Dana