Using the J Tech, I set it to 80% power and a speed of 50 mm/sec to engrave in walnut. Clean engraving just too dark / charred. It also has what looks like vertical ridges which leaves rows of charred residue (not sure how else to describe it). Any suggestions on it being a little lighter
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Should I lower both the power and speed or just the power?
Faster or cut power. Think about what changes are going to put less light on the piece.
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Makes since, thank you! Will this resolve the waves as well? Is there a step over distance issue?
I don’t see the waves here like you’re describing. If I were you, concerned about waves, I’d both slow down and cut power. If time isn’t an issue, I’d try 30-40% power at 30mm/sec and see how things go. In my opinion, if time isn’t an issue, do many light passes.
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Try doing the image as a less dense hatch pattern. A very fine array of criss crossing lines can look more attractive than a heavily charred piece.
Example of one I have laying around from setup with my 44:
If you want the best result with your workpiece though, try the material test tool in lightburn, or have someone generate the gcode for you if you do not have lightburn.
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Nice, that is beautiful! I have lightburn, so now I’m curious how you do the criss cross technique.
While I don’t recollect exactly what the settings were for that piece (I did a handful during setup) an example would be like this:
The line interval is highly important for the pattern. Your laser has a line width of roughly 0.0067in, so try doubling or tripling that for your interval (whatever comes out to your tastes).
The scan angle will give you the direction of the lines. In this case, 45 gives you the direction you see in my sample part. 0 would have perfectly horizontal and vertical lines.
You need the “Cross hatch” setting ticked to get it to go back and alternate. Otherwise you’d just have lines in one direction and they would be parallel to one another.
Disregard the speeds and power, I just used that screenshot for demonstrative purposes.
Here is what the pattern laid out in a circle would look like.
While there are certainly times that you want something “blacked out” and fully charred so to speak, I find that the engraved lines like this typically look much better for most things… and you’ll find your piece also completes in a third of the time or so. A fine engraved pattern also has a pleasing texture to the fingers.
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