New to laser engraving for forgive me if this is a dumb question.
I’ve tried to find an answer to this online but no luck. All the predefined woods in the Creality software are various sorts of plywood. Does this mean the A1 cannot engrave hardwoods (cherry, maple, etc.)? I have some hardwood plaques and boards I want to engrave, but if the A1 cannot handle that type of material then I will look elsewhere. Nothing more than 3/4” or less.
Thanks.
The A1 (and A1 Pro) uses a diode laser and it’s great for organic materials, be it the basswood plywood sheets or a solid slat of wood straight from the lumbermill.
You may have to enter a custom material type in the Falcon Design Space material selector. I recommend creating a test file with a 5x5 or 10x10 grid of squares, and assign speeds on one axis, power on the other axis, and start with a square in one corner at 1000mm/m speed and 10% power, then in the opposite diagonal corner, 10,000 mm/m speed and 100% power. Vary the rest of the squares in steps, and apply your test project to a sample piece of hardwood.
Use the output on the hardwood from your test to pick appropriate custom settings, and you should be good to go.
This is an example test file project available in the Falcon Design Space software. Be warned though, you may need to set the speed and power settings for each layer manually as they were all identical when I opened to look at it.
Thank you. That does seem to answer my question as to whether the A1 can be used on hardwoods, which it sounds like it can. Appreciate the setup suggestions as well. Will wait until the A1 goes on sale and then buy one.