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I just got an order for a 30 plaques for a high school swimming team. They picked out 5" x 7" alder plaques, lasered directly on the wood, for their order.
I have done a "fair" amount of wood to this point and a few alder plaques,
but would certainly be interested in any tricks or techniques anyone has found to work with the Alder.
These will be straight-forward with school name, award, recipient's name and a graphic.
Since you are doing so many of these set up a template in Corel and just change name and event. For my machines I would do at least 2 at a time and set them up so that they are touching top to bottom. Do a layout and check them on the laser and make sure that you set up your tiff file the same distance. I prefer to use less power and more speed on alder for a clean look.
For alder I use transfer tape on it, engrave and cut though it to eliminate scorching. With good settings you will get a brown, not black scorched edges,
but can still get bleeding of oils onto the surface without the transfer tape.
You can clean them up after engraving if you need to with lemon pledge on a cloth and darken lettering if you need to with shoe polish either black or brown depending on the look you want. Alder is really nice to laser.
My problem with Alder has always been inconsistant color of the engraving. I have fould that the depth of the engraving makes a big difference on how dark it looks. Increasing the spacing between the scan lines also helps, creating little hills and valleys in the Alder. The difference is astonishing. When examined under a microscope, the color (amount of charring) is the same. To the naked eye, the deeper engraving looks many times darker.
Mark
We have found this problem depending on where we purchase our Alder plaques. The plaques coming out of China do not seem to engrave as well and we have had issues with how inconsistent the grain patterns are over the surface of the plaque. We have had good luck with the plaques from Studio Workshop.
We use a toothbrush with a little soapy water on the surface of the plaque to clean up the oils. Works great and gets into the detail areas better.
We have used transfer tape, especially if we color fill, but have found it difficult to remove from the inside of letter etc.
Good luck with your project!
gregg,
I do alder all the time. I use plaques from Al at Smoke Wood. I agree with what others have posted. My settings for a mini 45 are 45s and 100p at 600dpi. If you really want to make an impression and get more orders, I recommend color filling! Here is what I do. I make my page size
5 x 7, put all the common elements on a master layer and then put the names on each page. I then fill the bed to capacity with impossion layout. For color fill I use transfer tape with the same settings and then just use acrylic color, liquitex from micheals works great. I used to spray paint but had some bleed issues. Now I just brush it on. The trick is to let it dry for a day then I peel most of the tape and let it dry one more day. Next I use a plastic paint scaper to remove the insides of the letters and logos. If i get any smudges I use a little alcohol to remove. The last step is to polish with pledge. Make sure you put a label on each one as more orders will follow!
good luck
ps: tell us about the helicopter!
Thanks everyone! As always, there is a lot of expertise and help around here and that keeps my scrap pile small (smaller at least)!
About the Alder Plaques... I have some that I purchased from JDS... I want to do photoengraving on them, but not getting desired outcome... I have tried both with and without PhotoGrav 3.0... Anyone have good luck on these type on plaques or should I be using a raw wood and finising it after engraving?
i recommend to my customers who want pictures to use the alder ones i get from JDS. I have ULS and use 100 power, 60 sp, 300 dpi, 4 image density and set to error diffusion.
As for design on an award without a lot of wording, I usually put an outline about 1/2" from the edge. This makes the plaque a little more dressed up (vector it on a fast setting and low power, it goes much quicker than rastering)
As for cleaning an alder plaque, after its done I rub it with a wet chamois cloth to clean it.
Plaques from JDS do fine for awards, for photos I prefer to pay a bit more and get from Laserbits, who usually send plaques with much more consitency of color/grain.
Barbara