After making a few adjustments to my 2D electrical outlet design, I was now ready to make a laser cut sample on wood. Though I've cut wood with a laser cutter before here at AUArts, this would be my first time engraving a design rather than cutting one out. I was quite excited—the smell of smoky wood and the texturing of engraving we saw in class was something I looked forward to.
A few edits needed to occur to my design for it to be serviceable, however. It needed to be in greyscale, needed to be the correct size for the laser cutter, and within the correct greyscale spectrum tailored to the laser cutter equipment.
Here is the design put into monochrome (may be a bit different as I took the photo and then needed to adjust it afterward as well)
It may be obvious at first glance that the background is an entirely different value—that's because it is. For my digital design, I enjoyed having a darker background to play around with, as I find values and colours more aesthetically pleasing to me when they are darker backgrounds. However, this wouldn't bode well for the laser cutter, as it would be engraving a deep, and more charred tone onto the wood. This could cause smoke staining, covering over other parts of the piece, as well as potentially creating a burnt smell on the wood, rather than a cleaner smoke smell.
It was also necessary to adjust the tone gradients to which each shape was adjusted. I had a lot of mid-tone greys in my piece if they were to be directly ported over to monochrome, and there would've been little difference in the physical engraving.
As such, this is the design we used to engrave onto wood.
Here is the wood I managed to engrave with the help of Peter Redecopp, the OBDF technician at AUArts.
Once again, the image is low quality due to the photo being taken on a tablet rather than a smartphone with a better camera.
On the left, is the engraving made on birch wood. I really enjoyed the deeper tones achieved with this engraving, though the wood itself is quite thin for my tastes.
On the right, is the engraving made on alder wood. I thought it was interesting how the lighter greys that were engraved came out much lighter than the base wood, though I am bit sad the darker tones aren't as dark as I'd like them to be. The wood is much thicker though (maybe too thick? I guess I'm picking when it comes to wood thickness, lol), and I think it feels better to hold.
As for the smell rating, the laser cutter didn't burn these guys too bad, so they have a nice, campfire smell 😁 It's still there after a couple of days too!
Overall, I didn't think the conclusion of this 2D design project would be a laser cut engraving, though I'm very glad it was, and I feel even more acquainted with the machines in the Thing Tank now. I may even engrave more just for the fun of it!
(Edit: grammar, image sizing, spacing)
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