How to engrave JDS Laserable Leatherette
I have read a lot of questions trying to figure out the easy way to engrave the JDS leatherette and I personally messed up about 20 sheets of leather till the point I got it "Perfected" and we will use that loosely. I wanted to write about the challenges that I went through and what I found to work the best.
1st off, if you dont know what the JDS Laserable Leatherette is, it is a faux leatherette that can be used in a variety of applications. Currently, I am using it the most with patch hats.
The laser I use to engrave the leatherette is a Thunder Nova 60w CO2 laser. I'm sure lasers with similar power should be close to the same settings.
Ok, now for the good stuff. One of the things that took the absolute longest to figure out was the power settings needed to only burn through the 1st layer of the leatherette but not the 2nd layer. Well, the power settings are actually the 2nd thing to worry about. The 1st thing is the images need to be a raster image. From my experience, you mostly are using vector images and they will need to be converted. The easiest way to convert them is in lightburn to right click on the image and select Convert to bitmap.
The difference between vector and raster is for another post.
Next up, you are going to want a DPI of around 600, have the speed set on 100% of your machines capabilities and the power at around 30%. Keep in mind this is for a 60w machine and will vary slightly from manufacture and even machine to machine.
For the actual machine itself, I didn't have to make any special setting changes over the factory settings. The only thing that stands out is the offsets but if you are already engraving then your offsets should already be set. Below is a small video of it running on the machine.
PRO TIP: Notice that the patch on the left is really bright and the one on the right is dull. Get a magic eraser and LA Awesome and lightly scrub the patch, it will clean the patch and make it look much nicer.
Hope this was helpful. It was my 1st of many blog post. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an email at sales@whipitupengraving.com and I will do my best to help out. Cheers!!!