I wanted everyone to see what we did on this leather. First we have been testing several leather suppliers and settings.

The attached picture is what we came up with. The leather came from www.siegelofca.com it is there English style kip and sells for about $4.00 per ft.

We ran this sample on a 50 watt laser using 10% power and 50% speed simply a halftone file. The only thing we did different was to use the HPDFO lens (really small spot size optic).

Other leather worked similar but did not tone as well as this stuff did.

Just wanted to pass on this information for those who are interested.

 

http://www.siegelofca.com

Sei

Thank you Sei,

Sometimes the fingers don't do what the brain says.

Jay,

I normally spend hours searching the Internet for pictures or Graphics to make samples from. However this one came from a family friends book. The book was on native American painting. This was one of the pictures in it.

The work came out awesome. I love it.
I have also been experimenting with leather, and have found the smooth lighter stufff is coming out the best. Still working on it though.

I have never tried halftone work. I use photograve and it always asks for greyscale. Did you do that work in Corel Draw?

I have a 30 watt system and use 100 speed and 35 power. It comes out nice, but nothing like that one.

Any advice on the halftone work would be appreciated.

Thank you,
Barbara
RGile Engravers

Barbara,

All I did is to import this into Corel and print I used the 3d engraving mode in our driver. I also used a 50watt laser doing this. But other than that there was nothing special. The leather is what I was testing to see how different leathers react. This type seamed to react the best out of all I tested.

Mike,

Thank you for the response. I went to the website that you recommended and I am going to try some of their leather.

Thanks again,
Barbara

Great Work!! I love it!

Has anyone experimented any with black leather? We tried it today and although it engraved using our 35w laser it does not show-up like tan does. Anyone have any suggestions on what we could apply to the leather to add color or to bring out the image? Something that would not wear off or clean off.

Thanks........

Good luck on the black - since it is back all the way through you will not get color contrast. As far as a color fill - I know of no way to keep from getting something that will stay put - even if you used a mask I don't know of a paint that will hold up to the wear. Something like rub and buff will go into the grains of the leather - not a good look. Brown and tan leathers do look good engraved the amount of contrast is determined by the way the hide was tanned and how much oil is in the leather - wide range of color contrast depending on these factors - but black is just black.
It is fun to engrave and I have done several projects with it - some things like the cheap leather billfold I carry did not have much contract but still looks cool when I show it to someone. Some of the hides I have bought have great contrast because of the tan process and oil added.

Good luck and have fun.