Baking Soda
As weird as it may sound, using baking soda to condition the wood can drastically increase the outcome! I found that it burns darker, but also more uniformly. Without conditioning, I was not able to produce greyscale / dithered images …
Tutorial
Painted Plywood Method
The painted plywood method uses one base color and one top color. The concept is to burn the top color just enough to reveal the base color, but not enough to burn through the base color. Wood preparation Cover the …
Wood Uniformity
Wood is not uniform throughout, and contains area of different density. More dense area will be difficult to burn whereas lighter area will burn easily. This creates unevenness in the artwork. While it can be beautiful and give character to …
Care for the lenses
After several hours of engraving, my laser seemed weaker than originally. The lens had not been cleaned a single time, nor was there a fume exhaust system for the machine. Both these caused the lens to accumulate fumes, which eventually …