26 topics · active now
Ten boards covering everything from your first engrave to running a laser business. Machine tags on every topic, so you can find people using the same hardware.
Pick a board, or scroll on for the latest across all of them.
Unboxed it an hour ago? Start here. First engrave, focus, safety and the settings that stop you wasting material.
Latest: First week with an LP2 Plus — what do I actually do first? · 3 weeks ago
The small things that make a big difference — masking, defocusing, air assist tricks and workflow shortcuts.
Latest: Backlit acrylic signage: the three mistakes I made so you don't have to · 4 weeks ago
Power, speed and passes for wood, acrylic, metal, leather, glass and everything else people keep throwing at a laser.
Latest: Clear glass keeps chipping — what am I doing wrong? · 2 weeks ago
LP1 through LP5, LX1 and LX2, enclosures, rotaries, rollers and air assist. Mods, upgrades and comparisons.
Latest: Rotary vs versatile roller for tumblers at volume? · 2 weeks ago
LaserPecker Design Space, LightBurn, image prep, vector tracing and getting files from Illustrator to the bed.
Latest: Getting Illustrator files into LDS without the paths going weird · 3 weeks ago
No laser output, connection drops, ghosting, banding, burnt lenses. Post your symptoms and someone has seen it before.
Latest: Engraving is fine, cutting suddenly stopped going through — same file as last week · 2 weeks ago
Work in progress, design critique and 'has anyone tried…' threads. Finished builds belong in the Showcase.
Latest: Layered mandala: 5 layers, one sheet, how would you improve the depth? · 2 weeks ago
Pricing, licensing, markets and craft fairs, plus selling digital files here on the forum shop.
Latest: Selling files here: what makes a listing convert? · 2 weeks ago
Glasses and OD ratings, fume extraction, fire risk, materials that must never go near a laser. Read before you cut.
Latest: Read this first: materials you must never put in a laser · last week
Ideas, bugs and requests for the forum, the shop and the materials database.
Latest: Could the materials database filter by laser type as well as machine? · 2 weeks ago
Pinned because it comes up every week and the answer never changes. Never cut or engrave these: - PVC / vinyl / faux leather with PVC backing — releases chlorine gas. It will corrode your ma…
Comes up constantly, so here's the short version from someone who runs both. Diode (445–455nm), e.g. LP2/LP4 diode module: - Wood, leather, cardstock, dark acrylic, coated/painted metal, sla…
Nothing changed. Same 3mm acrylic, same file, same settings. Last week it cut through in one pass, this week it doesn't.
Swapped ISPs, new router, and now LDS won't see the machine. It worked perfectly for two months before. USB still works fine.
Doing roughly 300 powder-coated tumblers a month. Currently using the rotary extension and it's fine but setup per item is slow — I'm losing a couple of minutes each time getting the alignme…
I've had files up for three months. Some sell steadily, some never sell at all, and I can't see the pattern. For those doing well — what's in your good listings that isn't in your bad ones?
Consistent problem: cuts through cleanly on the left third of the bed, doesn't quite make it through on the right. Same file, same material sheet. Cleaned the lens, checked the material is f…
The settings database is great, but a lot of entries make more sense if I can see whether they were done on a diode or a fiber source. LP4 and LP5 have both, so filtering by machine alone is…
Engraving wine glasses with an LP4 Safeguard. The mark comes out flaky and chipped rather than a nice frost, and sometimes bits of the surface come away completely. Tried lower power, higher…
Working on a 300mm layered mandala. Five layers of 3mm birch with 3mm spacers, backlit with a warm LED strip. Current problem: the middle two layers read as one because the shadow gap is too…
Sharing what worked after a lot of scrap. This is on black anodised aluminium business-card blanks, LP4 diode module. - Mode: engrave, greyscale off, 1-bit line art - Power: 100% - Speed: 12…
Cutting a lot of 3mm and 5mm cast acrylic for shop signage. Currently no air assist. Edges are okay but not the polished look clients expect, and I get occasional flare marks.
