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Laser Engraving Wood

It may seem trivial to talk about laser engraving wood but considering that it is one of the products that most of us do a lot than we should spend some time talking about it. We can talk about raster engraving and vector engraving as two separate processes when it comes to wood.

Raster Engraving Wood

When a laser is raster engraving (Figure 1 shows us some samples of raster engraved images) the laser marks with a back and forth motion. This motion is similar to what you would see with a laser printer or an inkjet printer. The laser slowly moves its way down the table. The amount of the movement is dictated by the dpi that has been chosen in the driver. When we are engraving a message in wood we use the raster movement of the laser to create the message. … Continue Reading

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Cermark / Thermark Metal Marking Spray

The TherMark process utilizes marking materials, or “inks,” available in various forms, which are applied to surfaces to be marked. The ink is then selectively fused – using patented laser marking technology – to the surface with a regular industrial marking laser. Finally, any excess ink is easily cleaned from the surface. The inks are scientifically formulated to make a permanent, chemical bond to surfaces, without compromising or damaging the material being marked.

TherMark marking materials are available as paintable liquids, aerosols or adhesive transfer tapes. The paintable liquid may be applied to surfaces with a brush, sponge or air sprayer. After fusing with the laser, any excess paintable liquid or aerosol spray can be cleaned from the surface by simply rinsing with water. Tapes are applied to surfaces using their own light adhesives. After fusing with the laser, the tape is lifted from the surface, carrying away any excess marking material. The used tape is then discarded.

Regardless of the application, the end result is a durable, high-contrast and high-resolution mark. (as appears from the Thermark web site) … Continue Reading

Working with CorelDraw’s Object Manager and How It Controls Your Engraver.

The object manager can be found in the “Tools” menu. See Figure 1. Note: for this example, make sure you have no objects on your page – so start a new file. … Continue Reading

Creating an Auto Layout in CorelDraw

Help File – Autolayout

Level – Intermediate to Advanced

For anyone who has owned a rotary engraver the one feature that we miss when we go to CorelDraw is a simple auto layout.

What is Auto Layout? Well basically it is a command that was controlled by one key. When you pressed this key your text and or logos would automatically space themselves out on the engraving plate.

CorelDraw can do this put it lacks the one-keystroke approach that we had in our rotary engraving software.

In this tutorial we will show you how to create a couple of an Autolayout a couple of different ways.

Once we have created the Autolayout we will create a one-button hotkey to activate the Autolayout.

To do this we will need to create what is known as a Macro. … Continue Reading