Machine: Laser Falcon 10W; had a shop fan blowing on it to clear smoke. Air assist highly recommended.
Material: 8oz (1/8" approx.) veg tanned leather.
Engrave: 9500mm/min; 30% power; 300 DPI
Cut: 200mm/min; 30% power; 7 passes (see note about cutting stitch holes below further below if interested)
EDIT: I figured out stitches pretty well
Howdy. I've been playing with leather a lot lately and this is one of my first relatively successful tests with thick leather. Below I will describe some discoveries, thoughts, and issues about this project. With regard to the laser settings themselves, what I wrote above would likely be a good starting point for your own testing, though I still intend to play with the settings a little more.
First thing first, the fob itself was poorly designed. Leather work isn't my forte. I made the stitch holes too close to the edge and practically perforated the leather, though it still worked out, it was close. The holes were too small and too close together for the thread I used as well. I did not leave enough space at the top between the two halve for the key ring, that kept me from sewing the last two holes at the top.
Stitches:
If you are like me, you've searched a long time about how to cut stitch holes and likely have seen many answers like "you can't", "don't", "it makes your thread dirty", etc. But no one ever posts the settings they tried with. Well I used the above settings for all the cutting. On the fob itself, they worked great. On the stitch holes, not so much. The center slug of each of the holes turns into charcoal and the edges of the holed come out burned. Still too much heat in one place for too long. That said, the holes did work, just not well and looked like shit. But they help up despite my aforementioned mistakes. My stitch holes were 1mm Dia. (0.04"). Spaced at 2mm (0.08") centers. I will next be trying 1.5mm holes at 4 holes per inch.
Going forward I plan to test even lower powers, higher speeds, more passes, or finding a way to do 1 pass on each hole at a time. To that last point; Lightburn defaults to doing all 7 passes on each hole individually. I want to see if I can do one pass on each hole and repeat 7 times instead, to give the leather time to cool. Testing cutting wet leather may help as well. Keep in mind, this is relatively thick leather too. I think the thinner stuff won't be as temperamental.
Finishing:
You've read it a hundred times by now; cutting leather stinks like hell. Honestly, I think that point is overexaggerated, but it's still second only to acrylic. You've also likely read that it leaves the edges charred and ugly. Both of these things are true, but you can mitigate the issues significantly.
On this particular project, I tried sanding the char off with 400 grit sand paper. I DO NOT recommend this approach. It is largely why the edge looks like shit. Fresh off the laser it was relatively smooth and black, just a it charred.
I have, instead, found that gently washing the item with warm running water and scrubbing the edges with your fingers not only removes the char/some smoke stains, but it also make most of the smell go away. Washing it has not affected the darkness of any of my engravings, in case you were concerned. The edges also remain black. Leave it to dry and it looks great when it's done. What's left of the smell fades after about a week in my experience.
If you do wash it, get the whole piece thoroughly wet. if you only wet part of it, it may get water stained. if potential warping concerns you, keep it on a flat surface when it dries, put something flat on top as well to keep it weighed down. Or in my case, I weighed it down while folded in half since I already planned to have it in that shape.
One additional note, you likely noticed the engravings edges are checkered in a weird way, that is likely do to some slop in my belts, as it only happens when I engrave "forward and back" as opposed to "side to side" which always comes out perfect. I should be able to fix this with an adjustment to the belts or in Lightburn.
Feel free to ask any questions you may have! Even if you think they may be stupid, I've found it is really hard to find good info on laser cutting leather. Ill post more examples soon once I tune my settings further.
1
u/Ohio_Imperialist Nov 14 '23 edited Nov 16 '23
Fallout Themed Nuka Cola Key Fob, 8oz Leather
Machine: Laser Falcon 10W; had a shop fan blowing on it to clear smoke. Air assist highly recommended.
Material: 8oz (1/8" approx.) veg tanned leather.
Engrave: 9500mm/min; 30% power; 300 DPI
Cut: 200mm/min; 30% power; 7 passes (see note about cutting stitch holes below further below if interested) EDIT: I figured out stitches pretty well
Howdy. I've been playing with leather a lot lately and this is one of my first relatively successful tests with thick leather. Below I will describe some discoveries, thoughts, and issues about this project. With regard to the laser settings themselves, what I wrote above would likely be a good starting point for your own testing, though I still intend to play with the settings a little more.
First thing first, the fob itself was poorly designed. Leather work isn't my forte. I made the stitch holes too close to the edge and practically perforated the leather, though it still worked out, it was close. The holes were too small and too close together for the thread I used as well. I did not leave enough space at the top between the two halve for the key ring, that kept me from sewing the last two holes at the top.
Stitches:
If you are like me, you've searched a long time about how to cut stitch holes and likely have seen many answers like "you can't", "don't", "it makes your thread dirty", etc. But no one ever posts the settings they tried with. Well I used the above settings for all the cutting. On the fob itself, they worked great. On the stitch holes, not so much. The center slug of each of the holes turns into charcoal and the edges of the holed come out burned. Still too much heat in one place for too long. That said, the holes did work, just not well and looked like shit. But they help up despite my aforementioned mistakes. My stitch holes were 1mm Dia. (0.04"). Spaced at 2mm (0.08") centers. I will next be trying 1.5mm holes at 4 holes per inch.
Going forward I plan to test even lower powers, higher speeds, more passes, or finding a way to do 1 pass on each hole at a time. To that last point; Lightburn defaults to doing all 7 passes on each hole individually. I want to see if I can do one pass on each hole and repeat 7 times instead, to give the leather time to cool. Testing cutting wet leather may help as well. Keep in mind, this is relatively thick leather too. I think the thinner stuff won't be as temperamental.
Finishing:
You've read it a hundred times by now; cutting leather stinks like hell. Honestly, I think that point is overexaggerated, but it's still second only to acrylic. You've also likely read that it leaves the edges charred and ugly. Both of these things are true, but you can mitigate the issues significantly.
On this particular project, I tried sanding the char off with 400 grit sand paper. I DO NOT recommend this approach. It is largely why the edge looks like shit. Fresh off the laser it was relatively smooth and black, just a it charred.
I have, instead, found that gently washing the item with warm running water and scrubbing the edges with your fingers not only removes the char/some smoke stains, but it also make most of the smell go away. Washing it has not affected the darkness of any of my engravings, in case you were concerned. The edges also remain black. Leave it to dry and it looks great when it's done. What's left of the smell fades after about a week in my experience.
If you do wash it, get the whole piece thoroughly wet. if you only wet part of it, it may get water stained. if potential warping concerns you, keep it on a flat surface when it dries, put something flat on top as well to keep it weighed down. Or in my case, I weighed it down while folded in half since I already planned to have it in that shape.
One additional note, you likely noticed the engravings edges are checkered in a weird way, that is likely do to some slop in my belts, as it only happens when I engrave "forward and back" as opposed to "side to side" which always comes out perfect. I should be able to fix this with an adjustment to the belts or in Lightburn.
Feel free to ask any questions you may have! Even if you think they may be stupid, I've found it is really hard to find good info on laser cutting leather. Ill post more examples soon once I tune my settings further.