With Multi-Ply Acrylic Wanamaker, Maker Experiment

terial. When it lands on the material, the laser is then re-engraving the dust at the same time it is engraving through that red acrylic. This leads to the engraving having that color in the second layer in addition to dust surrounding it. While you are able to wipe the loose dust off, the dust that was hit by the laser will embed itself into the second layer causing it to be permanently embedded into the acrylic.

In the image on the right, I shut the air assist off, meaning that the dust is sucked up by the exhaust without being blown around the material, and by laser engraving it from the bottom to the top, the dust is leaving the material before it has a chance to land back on top of it. This will produce the cleanest engraving result and ensure that you aren’t engraving the dust back into the second layer. If you have a machine where the air compressor is built into the laser, such as the Glowforge, it may not be possible to shut this feature off and it’s not recommended to modify the machinery to do this. While this is a nice lever to have, it’s not always an option.

Tip 3

– Try using a clean-up pass. I’m just as guilty as anyone else of trying to make it through materials in a single pass because I want to machine as quickly as possible to improve throughput and therefore profit. However, this is one material where I would advise against that strategy. Due to the material being extruded, as you engrave it you will start to see very small lines at higher powers meaning that instead of a nice white look in this example, it will be visible lines throughout the engraving. Your customer won’t like this look and it takes away from the quality.

In the following image, I used 100% power and got through the entire red layer in one pass. When I did this, it did make it through the red layer but I could clearly see individual machine lines which aren’t easy to see in this image. Think of an inkjet printer nozzle check where you see each individual print line instead of a solid black image. This is essentially what is happening in the engraving. You will see a ‘nozzle’ style result using high power and trying to get through this layer in one pass.

In the image on the right, I used a lower power for a first pass to get rid of the majority of the layer and then followed it up with a clean-up pass at a slightly higher speed to get rid of the rest of that layer. The downside to this method is that it increases how long it takes to machine your product, but it typically results in a much better quality engraving. While we all want to make products as quickly as possible to get them shipped out, I encourage you to take the time to test different methods with this material to find the best results for your needs.

Tip 4

Machine it out of focus. This tip may be something you haven’t heard of as a lever that you can utilize. When we talk