Using laser engravers/cutters for leather work

[Studio-N]

I have been asked to do a "one of" planner with some tooling and the logo/text will be done by someone else locally with a laser. Questions coming to mind:

Can the leather be tooled, and oiled, but not finished before lasering?

Will the laser darken the lettering and will I need to be careful what finish I use over it to prevent the blackening from coming off?

What else should I be asking?

Thanks for the timely thread. Now the bigger question, How much would one of these units cost? Easy to learn? Easy to get and service?

Two more cents worth: You can laser it after the tooling and oiling (or dyeing). But I would recommend doing it after the finish.

When you laser, you burn the leather. The engraver has a exhaust fan that pulls the smoke out which result in the smoke being pulled across the leather. This deposits particles on the leather. We call it smoke damage. With a finish on the leather, you can clean this up

with something like lemon Pledge and then re-sealed. The simplest way to look at lasering is to consider this: what can I accomlish with a soldering iron over the top of the leather? The laser is just faster and applies more heat an any given point, but the results are no different.

Next, keep in mind that lasers have a fixed focal point. They work great on flat items, but not on radical curves. To quantify this, if you tried to laser a circle on a flat piece of leather, you get a circle. If you try to laser a circle on a baseball, you get an oval. This is becuase as the ball curves down from the center, the laser is losing focus. The focal point should be accurate to +/- 1/8" from the point you set the focal point to.

Money wise, there are lots of options depending on what you want to do (besides leather). Being able to burn leather only requires about 25 watts of power. You can get a ULS 25 watt desktop model for under 8 grand. Table top is limited to 12 in x 12 inch. These are mostly targeted at trophy shops who are engraving wood plaques. If you plan to cut through wood, or to mark metal then 45-100 watts are what you need. These models usually have a 12x24" worktable to start and go up to 18x36 on the table top. These start to get into 5 digits.

There are a lot of bells and whistles you can add: Air assist, dual beams, rotary attachments, cutting tables and ULS offers a beam concentrator that allows it to directly engrave metal. Just depends on your pocket book.

Lastly, you'll need a computer and software. The computer is unimportant, but the operating system is. Only Epilog and ULS (the big 2) seem to keep up with changes in the OS quickly. The change to MicroSludge Vista was horrible for many operators. ULS and Ep updated quickly. A lot of the asian models are still waiting, and waiting, and waiting. The big 2 may not be the cheapest, but they are definately the best at customer support. As for the software, most people run either Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator. Both are Vector drawing programs. There are LOTS of books on both of these. Unless you take a workshop on them, you'll have to invest a lot of time learning how to use them. Other software will work, but the big 2 at least have optimised thier repspective drivers to work with Corel and Adobe.

As for me, I use a 2001 ULS M300 model with 45 watts of power and a 12x24 worktable. It is industrial grade and can be run 24/7. Someday I'll get back to doing stuff with it. peace.

[Jarednem]