Mind-Blowing Laser Engraving on Scratch Paper

Witness the amazing process of laser engraving on scratch paper using a laser cutter and your favorite imaging software (Kittl for me). This mind-blowing material produces stunning results that will leave you in awe and you will definitely want to give this paper a try. This is a very cheap material that produces amazing results with ease. Best of all, this paper can be protected with clear-coat after engraving to create a permanent setting in signs, plaques or photos. This is a maker's dream material for pennies per sheet.
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►►►► MY MAKER SPACE
Laser/Vinyl Cutters
SP-3624 90W 36"x24" self designed laser
Full Spectrum Laser Muse 3D
xTool D1 Pro Diode Laser: www.xtool.com/...
xTool M1 Laser/Blade Cutter: www.xtool.com/...
Cricut Maker 3: amzn.to/3s8j7i0
3D Printers
Sliced-Pi ]|[ CoreXY (self-designed)
Sliced-Pi ][ CoreXY (self-designed)
Prusa I3Mk3 with MMU 2
Creality CR-10 (massively upgraded)
Creality Ender 3 V2 amzn.to/3oLz7kc
AnyCubic Photon S SLA Resin Printer amzn.to/3wtSVvo
CNC Router
OneFinity Woodworker. onefinitycnc.com
►►►► SOFTWARE I USE
DaVinci Resolve 18 www.blackmagic...
Autocad Fusion 360 www.autodesk.c...
Inkscape inkscape.org
Kittl kit.tl/print_s...
Gimp gimp.org
#stevemakeseverything #laserengraver #laserengraving #laserengravingmachine #laserbusiness #lasercutting

[@Bearded-Viking-WoodWorks]

Extremely helpful Steve ! Wow !

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Thanks Daniel

[@FunDumb]

I love the scratch paper with glass on top. Looks legit.

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Thanks

[@LarryDMitchell]

I've used this paper before when I first received my diode laser but that's been over two years ago. I've been looking for a special project for our upcoming family reunion and your video was a good prompt. Thanks for the nudge. Great video.

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Note that you can engrave pretty convincing photos with this paper and the proper settings.

[@MakingwithMarilyn]

I received some scratch paper with one of my lasers and still haven’t used it. Thanks for the motivation!

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Give it a try

[@herbbrowning3823]

Thank you Steve, great info. Fun stuff!

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Glad you enjoyed it. It one of the best engraving material and certainly on of the cheapest.

[@vaughanza]

Excellent , great idea

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Thanks a lot

[@Fancylooks]

This is a marvellous idea! I am trying the scratch acrylic and leather from greatcarve soon, I hope it doesn't get accidentally scratched as easy as this wonderful paper. Are you sure those buildings represent London? The most famous tall building in London, which looks like a rocket, is missing and the rest don't look familiar

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Well, it’s AI’s version of London 😁. I’m not too worried that AI is about to take over the world. If you are engraving this paper for anything permanent, then you definitely want a light coat of clear coat over it.

[@Fancylooks]

@@SteveMakesEverything Yes, it is a good solution to protect the great work

[@billieb]

BTW love the short vid. I get tired of having to watch an hour to get a small piece of knowledge.

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Thanks. I can drone, so I’ve been focusing on more concise details

[@olafb.2929]

My scratch paper is already waiting :)

[@SteveMakesEverything]

It’s pretty easy to work with so hopefully you make something amazing

[@chuckscott4283]

Great video Steve - what did you mount the paper to???

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Just some half plywood and then applied clear coat

[@genabush4619]

Awesome!

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Thank you! Cheers!

[@markmorgan8378]

I have the D1 Pro 20 watt with air assist. Did you use air assist on this. Seems like could make the paper fly.

[@SteveMakesEverything]

I did but I had to paper held to the workspace with magnetic posts

[@Bearded_Buddha]

Could you do a tutorial on how to make the frame at 7:20 ? It would be much appreciated.

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Sure. I’ll add this to my project list

[@Bearded_Buddha]

Thank you.😊

[@CutItOutWithUs]

I wonder if this would work with a CO2 laser….hmmm. I love this idea! Great info as always Steve!

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Yes it should. You’ll really have to drop the power though. Run a material test to find the best settings.

[@CutItOutWithUs]

@@SteveMakesEverything Hi Steve, I used your links to order the paper and saw in the reviews that people are using it with CO2 lasers. We are at 100 watts and my husband tells me that the more wattage you have the more tricky operating at very low power becomes. Something about maintaining consistency at low levels? The paper and those offsets will be here tomorrow so we will fiddle with it this weekend and report back in case anyone is interested. Thank you, as always, for the awesome content!

[@SteveMakesEverything]

@@CutItOutWithUs Well a 100W CO2 won't really fire below about 15%, but you depend on the laser you can also increase the speed, so you should be able to do this. The material is pretty forgiving especially the paper with the white background.

[@CutItOutWithUs]

@@SteveMakesEverything Thanks for this; a few months ago my husband suggested we might “need” a lower power laser for projects requiring lower settings 🤣. I’m going to pass this on to him though; I know he will do one of those gridded power and speed setting tests on it. I bought both the white background paper and the rainbow. This should be fun!

[@SteveMakesEverything]

@@CutItOutWithUs Well, if you have a CO2 laser, you REALLY need a diode laser too 😉

[@denicabishop]

WOOOOOWWWWW!!!!!

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Glad you like this. Try it yourself

[@PastaDNA]

Great idea… Is the link for the white scratch off paper (musical notes sheet) broken? The link provides the black to white scratch paper. Of course, uncle Google is not showing any similar results….

[@SteveMakesEverything]

The paper is black to start and scratching causes it to turn white. The other is black but is rainbow colored when scratched.

[@CorbyQ]

Ok now this is the kinda of stuff I'm talking about. Yessss. Ok I do have a question.. what does dither mean?

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Ah, well it’s how computers simulate shading by adjusting the space between pixels in an image. It’s great for binary materials like this one where there is not shaded state (I.e. materials that are either light or dark). I mentioned “Jarvis”, which is one of the algorithms used to create this dithering, but Lightburn has several variations of dithering that work better or worse depending on the material. I really need to do a video in this.

[@CorbyQ]

@@SteveMakesEverything once you said the binary part either on off I understood what you were trying get at. I think a video would be a great idea

[@CutItOutWithUs]

Hi Steve. Me again. We bought the WeCreat 20 watt diode laser and are experiencing significant ghosting with lettering when engraving in bidirectional mode. Our question is, when you did your scratch paper projects on your S1, were you using bi or single directional mode. Also, we are finding inconsistencies in the engraving on the scratch paper in that on the lion head we did, the bottom of his head has some faint graying left behind but the top half does not even though it was engraved in one go. Cameron has spent several hours tinkering with settings and also running many test patterns but to no avail. Any input here is greatly appreciated. -Dana

[@SteveMakesEverything]

If it works in single direction mode but not bi direction then there might be a loose belt. Wecreat does sometimes struggle with bidirectional mode, but I thought they resolved this with a firmware update. I haven’t seen this with the 40W Wecreat which is exactly the same drivetrain. If you are doing scratch paper make sure it is taped down so it isn’t moving around. This would cause ghosting. Tape it to a piece of plywood so it has a bit of mass and is lying flat.

[@CutItOutWithUs]

@@SteveMakesEverything Thanks Steve! Do you happen to know how to tighten the belt on this machine? My husband built our 100 watt CO2 laser from the ground up but says how to tighten this belt isn’t obvious. Odd for him.

[@CutItOutWithUs]

Okay I’m not sure what happened but it looks like my reply came from the account that never worked. Ugh. But the update is from me/written by me. Sorry about that.

[@SteveMakesEverything]

@@CutItOutWithUs No worries. Did you get this resolved?

[@CutItOutWithUs]

@@SteveMakesEverything I didn’t but Cameron did. In addition to tightening belts and straightening the gantry he did some calibrations in LightBurn and was finally able to compensate well enough for the offsets to get the bidirectional engraving to render a good result with the diode head. We did buy the IR head; I don’t know if he will have to start from scratch with it all over again or if what he did yesterday will be serviceable but I guess we’ll find out. I think he secretly likes these problems-he says he doesn’t but he’s so cheery while going about figuring them out. The way he grins when he puts a perfectly engraved piece in front of me insinuates so much more satisfaction than he gets from when everything is running smoothly. We are definitely opposites in this regard! 😆 Thank you for checking in on us Steve; you’re the best!

[@martysilva893]

Thanks Steve, awesome video and tips. So I tried this on my Roly 10W and used your setting to do a material test, however noticed that the color on the scratch paper appeared to be heat sensitive and didn't pop as the regular scratching. Any suggestions? Thanks keep up the great work.

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Maybe this depends on the manufacturer. I did notice the colors were a bit flat until I sprayed a coat of clear coat over the finished design. Give that a try and see if it helps

[@MileyonDisney]

c o o l

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Give it a try

[@mrgrinch61]

Extremely awesome video Steve THANKS

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Very welcome

[@smashimone]

Steve, have you tried to do any cuts with his also? I was thinking this could be a cheap option to make front panel overlays for project boxes but I would also need to cut holes to mount switches and knobs etc

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Yes, this is just card stock underneath, so it will cut like regular paper.

[@stephen_LaserLuster]

Another fun and informative video from Steve! Thanks for keeping your videos short and to the point.

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Glad you like them!

[@loribrooks6736]

Oooh! Very cool (and fun). I have some scratch paper and will definitely give this a try. Thank you for experimenting with different materials.

[@SteveMakesEverything]

I’d encourage everyone to try different materials. Sometime you get unexpectedly pleasing results.

[@billieb]

Where did you get the flat magnets with "handles"?

[@SteveMakesEverything]

This come with the S1 honeycomb

[@pcmicrodude]

That is awesome and will be testing this out! Thank you!

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Glad it was useful.

[@sabrinabradley5010]

AWESOME!🎉 Can't wait to try!

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Have fun!

[@WonkyPapa]

Good video. I’ve used scratch paper and scratch board for several projects. I have found Inovart paper to give me the best results. It has a glossy finish. I have tried some cheaper scratch paper with a flat finish and the results were a little disappointing.

[@SteveMakesEverything]

The paper I used was the flat finish type. Seemed to work pretty well for me, but a gloss finish would be nice. I just spray with clear coat and it gets glossy, while protected from further scratching.

[@WonkyPapa]

I tried a Zebra picture on the flat finish paper today with a different engraving program and it looks decent. What kind a clear coat are you using?

[@SteveMakesEverything]

@@WonkyPapa Any will work, but what I used for the video was Rustoleum 2X clear gloss. Satin might be better though.

[@claytonkumuhone612]

That looks fun

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Give it a try