I wanted a simple project to use in a video on the front page, so I chose a clean coaster design in the style of a vinyl record with the site logo. It felt like a good way of making something visually tidy without overcomplicating things.
For the coaster design, I wanted something straightforward and fairly minimal with a pale label. I wasn’t sure how well it would render so I decided to run a couple of tests.
The first one was quick: scrap MDF, high speed, low power – just to get a feel for how the design would translate.
After that, I tweaked the size of the central portion, inverted the colours on the logo (which was necessary for the ‘white label’ since the engraved areas of slate are the bits that appear pale), and ran that part alone on a piece of slate using my go-to settings (listed below).
The test came out smooth, but the small image area meant the middle of the logo still lacked definition when burned. So I went back to the image file and thickened the lines in the icon part of the logo.
Before burning the final piece, I aligned the slate on the grid very carefully. Engraving circles onto a circular slate demands precise positioning. This is why making a positioning grid was one of the first things I did – it allows me to use absolute positioning, check my framing is accurate, and always know where the laser is going to start from.
The estimated burn time on this was 18 minutes but Lightburn time appears to be a bit like washing machine time, so it ended up a little bit slower than that.
The result was a bit more delicate than I’d hoped for in some spots, so I made a copy of the Lightburn file with just the areas I wanted to improve and ran a second pass. That’s always a bit risky – if the material shifts even half a millimeter, it’ll throw everything off. So I held my breath and made sure not to touch a single thing on the desk before hitting go.
I’m happy with how this one turned out. I usually lean toward slate coasters with rougher, more natural edges, but I think that the clean finish works better for this kind of design. Next time I’ll push the complexity a bit – maybe a picture disk style or a more detailed label design.
What I Used
- Laser: Sculpfun C1
- Material: 4 inch round black unsealed slate coaster with smoothed edges.
- Software: Photoshop, Lightburn
- Burn settings: 1500 speed 65% power (image, inner lines), 1000 speed 65% power (outline, 2 passes)
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