Cork is an exceptionally popular engraving material in the industry. Because of its durability and sustainability, many engravers offer customization services on this hearty material.
Here we'll show you how we customized various sizes of cork bulletin boards with the laser. With the right settings, we found this material to engrave beautifully with great contrast and texture.
Materials:
Cork bulletin boards - available at office supply chains, super-store retailers, and online.
We purchased ours through Amazon.
Files: Right click the files below and choose "Save target as." Open the file in CorelDraw 8 or later.
Keep these helpful tips in mind when performing this project:
Make sure your board will fit in your engraver - pay close attention to the dimensions of your bulletin board or you won't be able to engrave it because it won't fit!
Make sure to account for any framing during the design process. If your board has a one-inch frame around it, your engraving area becomes smaller.
Even using high speed and low power (100%/10%) cork engraves very well. Almost too well for graphics that are 100% black. We converted all of our artwork to various shades of gray (40 - 80 % black) to avoid scorching.
Consult your owner's manual for the correct speed and power settings for your machine.
We used a 120-watt Legend 36 EXTwith the following settings: Raster speed: 100%
Raster power: 10%
Insert your bulletin board in the engraving system. Open the file you'd like to engrave and make appropriate changes to text/design.
When you're done customizing the design, draw a vector box around it and send ONLY the vector job to the laser with the red dot pointer on. That way you can see exactly where your design will go. Adjust as necessary.
When you're happy with the placement of the design, remove the vector box and send the job to the laser for engraving.
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