Our map designs have been tested on a range of software and laser engraving machines and the following post provides some settings and tips for working with different machines
For this article we are using a 14″ X 11″ X 3/8″ maple cutting board which makes a beautiful house warming gift and a perfect place to start with engraving maps using your laser
Glowforge
The Glowforge is a popular entry level laser and a great tool to generate custom map gifts and products with using our high contrast maps.
The following settings work with the Glowforge online software and we have found give good consistent results. You can lower the lines per inch to reduce the time it takes and make a shallower engrave if you prefer. Its very important to set the grayscale to “Vary Power” so that it does not try and reprocess and dither the map file.
An 11″ X 14″ cutting board takes about 4 hours to engrave fully on the Glowforge Basic and you do need to take the honeycomb tray out be able to fit it under the laser head.
Lightburn and the Xtool D1
This is a screensnap of the settings used with the Lightburn software to get a good engrave with Xtool D1 – it takes about 4.5 hrs to engrave a 14″ x 11″ maple board
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