Laser engraved delrin Stamps

[Bigtum85]

Does Anyone have any insights on making Delrin engraved stamps? I am looking for settings for my Boss Laser and not having much luck.I have been Etching my work into the leather but I would like to make stamps. Here are a few pictures of my latest work. Keep in mind that these are 1"x 1"

 

[Nuttish]

The large stamped fields with raised text are similar to a blind deboss in letterpress printing. Even more so with leather, that technique requires even steady pressure and it is difficult to make a crisp, durable impression without heat. So trying to make that impression by whacking with a mallet isn't going to work well. At the very least you'll want to use an arbor press or clamps.

We've made Delrin stamps in an Epilog and a Universal, which have dedicated rubber stamp modes that allow you to create a shoulder. With a paper stamp, since they don't make debossed impressions, you need a shoulder to build up thin lines so they don't deform. With a leather die, the shoulder is a double edged sword. Without it fine lines in your art will translate to weak structures that tend to get crushed and deform with use. On the other hand, the shoulder will create a larger  top than bottom of your impression, which might make fine lines less sharp.

I don't believe the Boss software has a stamp mode. If it allows you to assign different powers to colors, you might experiment with creating your own shoulder.

Regardless of the machine, it helps to run your job multiple times at lower powers, ever so slightly adjusting focus down to approximate the material surface. Better yet, engrave a square on the corner that you can use with your focus gauge rather than estimate. I say run the job multiple times because I've found that the heat from engraving  small areas like dies will cause your kerfs to sag and can affect fine lines.

And regardless of all this, you can only get so much detail out of a cold stamp making a deep impression like that. So you might experiment with that as a design constraint.