LightBurn Tutorial - Defocusing Engraves

There's an art to defocusing your laser beam in order to get the cleanest engrave, especially when it comes to acrylic! In today's video, I will show you how to test different Z Offsets to find out which focal distance works best for you.
I engraved four pieces of acrylic with the same speed and power settings, but adjusted the z-offset on each one. There is a clear winner at the end! 😍
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Time Stamps:
0:00-0:21 Intro
0:22-2:48 Changing Z-Offsets in Lightburn
2:29-3:19 Mirror Your Design
3:20-3:29 Laser Engraving
3:30-4:32 Reviewing Results
4:33-5:19 Reviwing Results in the Sunlight
5:20-5:43 Outro

[@FFAquad]

Another great video Heather. Love learning these little tricks. Didn't know you could adjust the Z axis in Lightburn. Awesome!

[@LoBoDesigns]

Appreciate the feedback! 🎉 Thanks for watching!

[@Wargasm1978]

Hi Heather, it's very hard to engrave acrylic that deep and get clean results. I only engrave deep when making acrylic stamps, in that case I engrave with normal focus the 1st pass and defocus the 2nd pass to clean up any remaining lines. Those visual lines are normally related to the engraving lines overlapping. I don't believe is possible to engrave that deep at 400 DPI without line overlap... My 2 cents are, use minimum power that way you get the thinnest engraved line/dot and play with DPI/LPI to find the best results, also like you I defocus 2mm (Pros: Better quality. Cons: Longer engraving time because of Higher DPI) Remember Higher Power and/or Defocus will engrave thicker lines, so you will need to decrease the DPI/LPI (Pros: Faster engravings. Cons: Lower quality) Some people also uses a fine layer of dishwasher and get good results, didn't try this because I'm very happy with my results. My best engraving machine is the k40 because the 35w tube have a really thin laser beam and in low power can engrave at 500 DPI easily, my 100w at minimum power I engrave only at 250 DPI or lower. Take my tips with a grain of salt, every machine is different. Only trial and error will get you to a quality you're happy with. This is my job for +10 years ☺ Best of Luck with your channel, you got a new subscriber. Greetings from Portugal.

[@LoBoDesigns]

Appreciate you! 🫶🏻 Thanks for watching and following along!