Essential Tools for Laser Engraving

Once you have a laser engraver, you pretty much have everything you need as laser engravers come well-equipped. Here is a list of some additional tools and accessories for smooth operations:

• To clean the machine, we use denatured alcohol and then spray a silicone on all the moving parts.
• You need a lens kit to clean your lens. (You want to clean your lens once a day.) Take good care of your lens, or else you might have to pay about $300 to replace.
• You need an air supply to blow air across your lens so that you don’t get a hot particle off of something and crack your lens or put a burn mark on it. Lenses get hot, so an air supply can help keep it cool when doing a long job.
• If you’re doing a lot of granite, marble, glass, ceramic, or anything like that, you need a color-fill to brighten it or to change the color on it after you engrave it. Color-fill can help raise the product value. Marble and granite will not give a frosty white image when you engrave it; it tends to be a gray image. If you want it white, use a color-fill; you just rub it on, rub it off to quickly stick on to where the laser hit the material. That works on any non-porous material; you can’t use it on wood because it sticks right to the pores and you can’t get it out because it dries almost instantly, and there is no solvent for it.
• We also have all our machines hooked up to an exhaust system. That’s an accessory most manufacturers sell with the laser.

-Captain Jim McCreary, LaserSketch Ltd.