Rubber stamps, one or two passes ?

[Jani Pedersen]

Hi again,

Yesterday I did my first rubber stamps, taking advice from the boards here alongside the epilog pages.

Epilog suggest doing two passes, the first to 'break' the rubber - but I haven't seen that mentioned here. Epilog also gave settings for a 120w machine !

I have figured out that if I do a first pass at 10sp 100 power and then a second at 15sp and 100 I have a really nice outcome (or vice versa).

However I am keen to find out if it is necessary to do them in two passes as I have found I had a bit of flaring on the second pass if I didn't take the rubber out to clean it inbetween. That obviously increases the time taken to do the stamps.

I DID take it out and clean prior to cutting though (vectoring).

Also Epilog suggest that you have two cutlines around the stamps, one for the individual stamp and another to surroung ( fence ) a group of them. Why is this ? Is it really necessary ? At one point it shows two stamps each with their own cutline and fence and says that this is incorrect.

I am quite happy to do it, but just wonder why it is necessary or if indeed it is.

I had no horrid odours but there was a heck of amount of 'dust' in the machine - I can imagine that there will be a lot of cleaning up to do after a session on rubber stamps !

Thanks in anticipation.

Jani

[Jack Burton]

I run my stamps only once.

[Andrea Weissenseel]

I also only run them once, with one cutline

[Jani Pedersen]

Thanks guys. What speed do you use ? I attempted a single pass and single cut line at the following settings - the vector was fine but the raster was a bit 'low'

7 sp / 100 / raster

20 sp / 100 p / 100 vector

[John Noell]

We use a single pass at 10/100 for the rastering. The stamps come out quite nicely. For the Epilog, if the driver is set to rubber stamp mode WITH FENCE, the outer line simply tells the laser the outer limit of what to engrave away. Inside that is where it should cut. Then we usually have a wide (raster) line for a border on the stamp.

[Bill Cunningham]

At 600 dpi 6 spd 100% pwr using stamp mode and 1 pass for real rubber (+- this may depend on the rubber source) and polymer 10sp 100pwr cut at 15spd 100 pwr 500 freq.. Also after flipping, on the TT, offset the fence a little more on the right than on the left, it has a tendency to cut a little close on the right side.. this seems to be a software problem on the TT

[Viktor Voroncov]

Generally speaking settings depend from type of rubber. We sell three different types priced from $5 to $15 per sheet. Speed of engraving for expensive is 20% faster than for cheaper. But anyway both engraved in one pass

[Rodne Gold]

I have done about 7 rubber stamps in around 10 years of lasering , all for internal use...all done in a single pass with 25-30w lasers - I initially bought 3 a4 sheets of laser rubber - still got 2.5 of em..
Waste of time imho
HOWEVER I have used rubber stamp mode MANY times for masters for spin casting where we want a shoulder and have done a lot of foam based paint "stamps"