Normally YES, but not always.
I made some some small wooden signs I sell at a local craft store. In the past I used a white poly board, painted it black and v carved it.
Since I got my Ortur I decided to use wood and laser it. The problem I had was the lines on the text were too fine and therefore not easy to read. So I started to play around with the focal length. For me I decreased the focus distance by about 1/4 inch. These caused the beam to be be slightly wider and burn darker,
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if your text is a vector line then de-focusing is one way to make the burn line wider but generally I use the offset tool in LightBurn to create wider vectored letters/designs.
You can do that, but that does add time to the burn. In my case, double the time since it is all text and a border.
Computer numerical control(CNC) is all about repeatability and defocusing a laser for an effect is bordering on artistic side and lots of trial/error. It’s definitely a technique which has been used for years along with lots of others. What ever works well for you is the right way.
I never been a conformist. But I do agree with you
Speaking of repeatability, I find the Ortur is somewhat lacking. If I repeat an engrave it is usually off. My process is
Home
Engrave
Home
Engrave. Not always spot on. But hey $400 device. I love it.
if you paid $400 then you’re talking about a Laser Master 2 machine with over 200mm of build space and somewhat long belts. Belt tension is going to be critical for accuracy. And without encoders the machine is still at the mercy of micro-stepping on the stepper motors.
If the Remora project gets ported to the STM32 micro-controller, there could be a path forward for adding $20 magnetic encoders to the back of the stepper motors and have LinuxCNC closing the loop for much more accuracy.
