Fire Up The Laser

Finally, F-I-N-A-L-L-Y!, I get to do some laser etching.  I have been (somewhat) patiently waiting for this step.  I disassembled the unit and did a lot of sanding (better to sand now, before the laser work, instead of later and risk damaging the imagery).

My design has three images that will be laser etched onto the wood.  I did several test burns, with different settings, in order to find the desired darkness.  Once that was decided it was time to light the rocket. The first is a landscape scene across the front marquee.

The marquee will contain 2 speakers for the Bluetooth receiver.  Those speakers will be covered with the black grills shown in the previous image.

Next was the bass image for the cabinet's right side panel.  The first image below shows the test burn on a scrap sheet of similar colored plywood with the second image being the completed burn on the actual cabinet item.

The bass image is about 11" wide and 17" tall.

For the opposite side I decided to do an eagle.  A little past half way through the burn the computer software locked up and the laser started acting weird.  My burns are done in 2 passes.  The image below shows the first pass complete and, in the lower left corner, where the second pass had started - making the image darker - before things went South.

I never run the laser unmonitored and was quickly able to shut things down.  The following image is a close-up of where it began burning too much.  

I regrouped, regenerated my tool path to do only the second pass, and started again.  It wound up burning that particular spot a total of three times but, overall, it is not noticeable.  The following picture shows the completed burn.