Hi Everyone,
I’m not very good at writing up my projects to post here, but I hope to be able to put a bit more effort in this year, starting with a simple one.
In what feels like mid 2021 I purchased some “Laser Rubber Sheet 2.3mm Gray” from AliExpress. (A4 Laser Rubber Sheet 2.3mm Gray for Printing Engraving Sealer Stamp DIY Craft cut by laser engraver to make stamp rubber plate|Stamps| - AliExpress)
My plan was to make some custom stamps for personal use, as well as the occasional gift, the first of which is what is featured in this post.
I created this design based on a drawing my daughter did of a Murray River Turtle. Her school teacher from last year has one as a pet, so we made this the feature of a unique end of year gift.
The original image was drawn on paper with Sharpie, I then took a photo and imported it into ProCreate. I had hoped this would be unnecessary, but ended up doing a little cleanup and thickening of the lines. You can see the original with the edited version overlayed below:
I exported this as a PNG, brought it into LightBurn and used the Trace feature to turn it into a vector.
I then added the Curved Text directly in LightBurn and a border using concentric circles.
To invert the stamp, so that the text and image are raised and the rest removed, I simply added another circle around the artwork, all on the same Fill layer.
Tip: Having made a few different stamps now, the border turns out to help quite a bit in preventing smaller details from deforming during use.
After a few tests, I found the following settings gave good results:
For Engraving:
Note: Being cautions, I made sure to remove enough material to give a reasonable height difference between the raised and base levels. It is possible that this is excessive. These settings remove just over half the material (around 1.2mm) I will need to test if this can be reduced.
For Cutting:
Tip: Using the (fairly) new Ramp feature in LightBurn I was able to angle the sides of the engraved areas to provide additional support to the stamp features. This was a game changer in terms of the minimum width of the detail possible and is visible in the preview as a shaded transition between white (no cut) and black (full power).
Following all this and on somewhat of a deadline now I would like to say I mirrored everything and ran the job. I did not, so now have a ‘spare’ perfectly good mirror version…
Note: One last note is that this stuff smells quite strongly when engraving. I used a F2000 on full power AND whole room extraction, and it was still noticeable.
Furthermore, the dust from engraving is super fine and gets on everything. Using the V2 Air Assist for both engraving and cutting kept the Focus Lens clean throughout, though I had to do a fair bit of general clean up, including the Fans, after each stamp.
The final product was around 40mm in diameter and after a good wash in warm soapy water, 3D printing a quick handle and cap then giving it a test, it ended up turning out quite well and was very well received.
I’d love to hear if anyone else has attempted to make a stamp on the Emblaser?
