Wainlux K6 User Information

 I've put together an inspirational image, to get a feel for what is possible with your K6 Laser Engraver. Click on the image for the full size version. 1. Small sweet box, created as a gift for a relative. The dark text is Black & White mode, the lighter text is in cut mode. 2. Macaron box for my daughter's birthday. Each one is engraved in cut mode, with varying power and cut settings between 30 and 60. Each colour requires slightly different settings and took approximately 2 to 3 minutes per macaron for the engraving process. 3. Christmas wreath, letters engraved in greyscales mode onto birch pieces. The inset image shows the engraved wood pieces in isolation, and highlights the brown colouring by not engraving too deeply. 4. These hex boxes are personalised prizes in a dance competition. They are filled with sweets for the winners and engraved with their names. 5. Another personalised gift created for a lady with a big heart. After ordering a number of boxes for childre

One of the more involved projects with your K6 laser engraver is cutting out and building 3D models. This article describes my process for creating the model shown here, which is my employer's company logo made into a windmill. The material used is 1mm balsa wood, bought from Etsy. It's quite delicate, and you could possibly cut through 2mm balsa with an extra pass or 2. The design This article is not designed to teach you how to use your graphics software. At a high level, the design process involved: Importing the logo in EPS format. This is a scalable vector format which allowed me to set it to the correct size, and colour it all black to ensure the engraving software read it correctly. The stand pieces were designed as vector graphics again. Using bezier nodes, a nice curved contour could be produced and sets the final design apart from something that could have been cut by hand. The holes for the spindle were created as 1mm circles. The slots are exactly 1mm, the same thi

 In a previous post I uploaded my Simple Positioning Template to align objects with the position of the laser. Although useful in my early tests and trials, I came to realise this is - in most cases - the wrong way around. I have found that it is better to create a template that sits on top of the object to be engraved. Here you can see my latest template in action. By using the preview function in the app, I can quickly align the engraving area to the template. Another little tip here is to reduce the power of the  weak light  to 3 or 4. you get a less intense beam that is easier to view and align. As you can see, the template has plenty of holes to view the surface below. The lines of the cutouts also help to align areas smaller than the full square. The image for the template is linked below. You can create your own from this image, I would recommend using card to create it. On a darker card like that shown in the photo, you can use cut mode (Panda 3 in the interface) at a power o

 An inspirational post on making a Christmas wreath. My wreath-making skills are zero, but the results are quite unique. Here's the result: You'll want to know about the engraving first. Each of the 7cm circles are natural pine wood slices. I picked them up at Amazon for £9.99 GBP. Unfortunately, they appeared in a popular TV program in the last couple of weeks and the price is now £11.99! You can find them on Amazon here . The letters are made separately in my photo editing app at 300dpi and around 5cm in size. Make sure you preview all of the letters to get them sized proportionately. For example, if you start by sizing a letter "I", letters such as "M" and "X" will be far too big. Using greyscale mode at 14%, I get the results below. I'm happy with the brown colouring as opposed to the usual black results from a deep engraving. Next, I have 6 more slices (3 for each side) which are to form the rear layer of the wording. Each one is drilled t

Cutting mode on the Wainlux K6 engraver is much faster than the other engraving modes. This is because rather than scanning back and forth like a traditional printer, it follows the contours of the image. The test piece below is a good example that shows even complex contours - with lines inside lines - are possible in Cutting mode. Cutting mode is not just for cutting. With the right settings, it can be used to trace an image in wood or other materials. The obvious limitation is that you can't fill areas. With a little forward planning, it is possible to combine faster engraving of lines with slower engraving of more detailed areas. The equivalent image in Black or Greyscale mode takes around 45 minutes.  Using the logo from my daughter's business, I ran some tests for the cutting options. In all cases the engraving size is 70mm in diameter. Any settings that are not mentioned are left at their defaults. You will not see much difference in the photos, but please read the desc

There are many different ways to find the right place to put your engraving. One of the simplest methods is to cut a square, with a few markers. Using this square you can place your object to be engraved, overlay it with the template in the position you are about to engrave, and then use the engraver preview function to align the preview laser with the square template. This article shows one of the most simple templates. It's also a good exercise for practising alignment, one of the keys to a perfect result. Firstly, create an 80mm x 80mm square, with 0.2 point lines marking out 1,2,3,4 and 5mm in from the edge. This is printed out onto the card or other material that you will use as your template. You can download the image here . The next step is to cut a hole by following the 5mm line. This will remove the central 70mm of the template (80mm minus 5mm from each edge).  Put the printed card under the engraver, and tape it down if it is raised from the surface underneath. Remember

Making a decorated text engraving is easier than you think. There are a wealth of resources to help do this, and with a little knowledge of graphics software, you can quickly produce something that looks amazing. here's a quick example that took 5 minutes, including finding the resources I needed: The image was found on Pixabay , a site full of free, commercial resources with no attribution required. It's a good place to start until you need something a little more specialised. Search for keywords such as "banner" and "ornament", along with filtering on black and white images only. I downloaded it in PNG format, which is generally higher quality than the equivalent sized JPG image. If you are comfortable with the SVG format and your software can import it, this is the best format which scales to any size perfectly. You can specify the download dimensions for PNG and JPG formats. You should calculate for at least 300dpi (dots per inch) in your final engraving