First try at laser inlay marquetry work

[Carl Fisher]

Just playing around with some scrap.

Laser engraved a scrap piece of pine to create the pocket using a raster cut. Then did a vector cut on the veneer for the inlay. It was a pretty good fit with no adjustments for laser kerf so I'm pretty close on the settings I think. If anything I can ease up on the power on the engrave step as it was a bit too deep.

I guess this warrants some further experimentation.

 

[bguil]

Why raster on one and vector on the other?

 

[LeftyTom]

Spiffy!

 

[Carl Fisher]

Why raster on one and vector on the other?

Raster hollows out the pocket. It runs the laser side by side burning out material with each pass the way a printer prints.
Vector does the outline tracing to cut just the border the way a plotter or vinyl cutter works.

You could raster just the outline but would take way too long and the vector provides a cleaner tracing cut.

 

[kevin waldron]

Carl,

You may find that if you cut on the back side of the male part that it will fit tighter...... the natural beam cut of the laser is as an hour glass.......

We have two large ULS lasers and use a 4.0 lens most of the time..... given this we typically make the male part .003" larger than the pocket.

You also don't have to use raster to pocket the female part..... vector will work but you must grid, or multi-line offset your area ..... one advantage to this is that you can control burn more precisely and you can take advantage of layers and colors to achieve deeper and shallower area's all in the same operation.

Corian or similar material will also make a great inlay male part......white, black, etc.....

Hope you enjoy. We have a lot of cast green florescent scrape if you need some to play with..... be glad to give it to you if you will pay shipping from TN......(We use this in our musical instrument business when we sell an instrument template)

Blessings,

 

[Carl Fisher]

Hi Kevin. Would love some scrap if you have some to spare. Send me a message and we'll talk details.

As for vector cutting the female pocket, this was a 3/4" scrap of pine that I was playing with so raster was the only way I could see to get the pocket in there. I would have had to chisel out the meat in the middle if I did a vector outline in that

If I was doing true veneer in veneer marquetry would definitely go the vector route with a mirrored image to allow for the bevel. I think doing the raster pocket in this case also masked the need to adjust for laser kerf as it was a pretty snug fit.

Love those fretboard inlays.

 

[kevin waldron]

Carl,

Not sure you are following on the vector pocketing....... you would draw an outline of the dragon in your case then with vector lines fill the outline with a pattern of some kind....(density would be determined by power and speed and the lens used......much like a Cad program uses hatched lines....) this will also allow for you to change colors/layers and cause the laser to do in our case Red first then other color as it steps through the interface in most cases this is desired...... when you do this you can control the power, the intensity, and the time of each color burn the first cut color then the other colors follow...

In Corel if you simply copy a line more than once it will be in the color etc of the original...... the way the laser interface runs it will do all of that line before it moves on if you say copied the line 4 times....... disadvantage for doing this is that the item doesn't have time to cool off...... If you where to copy a line then change colors the laser would do all of that color before it moved to the next color.....So...... the technique is to get the file to do all of one color then return to do the next color and so on......still clear as mud........

We can talk by phone when we make contact on the acrylic....

Blessings,

 

[Carl Fisher]

Ahh, that's a limitation of this machine currently. It doesn't understand color to power as there is no PWM control for the laser. When I look into upgrading to a smoothieboard or reprap style board, then that opens up options like that but for now it's one operation at one power level since the power is manually set with a dial on the machine.

 

[danmart77]

Carl that is just gorgeous. My head is spinning with ideas on how this could work for special projects to make them just pop. Love to see more photos of laser work from you and some others.

Dan