Laser Engraving Settings for Wood: Starting Numbers and How to Adjust Them
Power and speed by species and tube wattage, how to scale settings between machines, and why a chart that works for one shop fails in another.
For a CO2 laser engraving wood, a reliable starting point is 15 to 25 percent power at 300 to 500 mm/s on a 60W tube, with hardwoods taking more power than softwoods. The number that actually matters is not the percentage but the effective wattage, which is power percent multiplied by tube wattage. Fifteen percent on a 40W tube is 6 watts; the same 15 percent on a 100W tube is 15 watts, which is why charts copied between machines produce scorched or invisible results. Scale by effective wattage, keep power above your tube's minimum firing threshold, and run a material test before any job that matters.
Key takeaways
- Power percent is meaningless without the tube wattage. Multiply the two. A 20 percent setting is 8W on a 40W machine and 20W on a 100W machine, a two and a half times difference in energy delivered.
- Scale between machines by holding effective wattage constant. If you move a setting from a 60W to a 100W tube, either drop the power percent proportionally or raise the speed by the same ratio.
- Glass tubes have a power floor. Most DC glass tubes fire unreliably below about 10 to 12 percent. On a high-wattage machine you cannot keep dropping power for light engraving. You raise speed instead.
- Species matters less than density and resin. Dense hardwoods need more energy. Resinous softwoods like pine char unevenly regardless of how carefully you set the machine.
- The chart is a starting point, not an answer. Moisture content, grain direction, plywood glue lines and even which side of the board you are on all shift the result.
Search for wood engraving settings and you will find a dozen charts that disagree with each other. Try one and it either scorches the board or barely marks it. That is not because the charts are wrong. It is because almost none of them state the one variable that determines everything.
This guide gives starting numbers by species and tube wattage, explains how to move settings between machines without guessing, and covers what to do when the same settings that worked yesterday fail today on an apparently identical board.
Why Settings Charts Fail
Laser software asks for power as a percentage. That percentage means nothing on its own, because it is a percentage of whatever tube is in the machine.
Multiply power percent by tube wattage and you get effective wattage, which is the number that actually describes how much energy reaches the wood. Twenty percent on a 40W tube delivers 8 watts. Twenty percent on a 100W tube delivers 20 watts. Running a chart written for a 40W machine on a 100W machine delivers two and a half times the energy the chart author intended, which is exactly how a design comes out charred.
The second variable is speed, and it works in the opposite direction. The faster the head moves, the less time the beam spends on any given point, so the less energy that point receives. Energy density is roughly proportional to power divided by speed.
That gives you a working rule. If you change machines, hold power multiplied by wattage divided by speed constant and you will land close to the same result. Everything below follows from it.
CO2 Engraving Settings by Wood and Tube Wattage
These are starting points for a medium-contrast surface engrave at 300 DPI, assuming air assist on and a correctly focused beam. Expect to adjust by a few percent either way.
Wood | 40W | 60W | 80W | 100W | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Basswood | 18% / 300 | 13% / 300 | 10% / 320 | 12% / 500 | Very forgiving; the easiest starting material |
Baltic birch ply | 25% / 300 | 18% / 320 | 14% / 350 | 15% / 550 | Glue lines engrave darker; expect faint banding |
Poplar | 20% / 300 | 15% / 320 | 11% / 350 | 12% / 520 | Inexpensive, soft, good for practice |
Pine | 18% / 350 | 13% / 380 | 10% / 400 | 12% / 600 | Resin pockets char unevenly; keep power low |
Cedar | 20% / 320 | 15% / 340 | 11% / 380 | 12% / 550 | Soft, aromatic, scorches at the edges |
Cherry | 28% / 280 | 20% / 300 | 15% / 330 | 20% / 600 | Rich contrast; one of the best engraving woods |
Maple | 32% / 260 | 22% / 280 | 17% / 300 | 20% / 520 | Hard and tight-grained; excellent detail |
Walnut | 28% / 280 | 20% / 300 | 15% / 330 | 18% / 560 | Dark already, so contrast is subtler |
Oak | 32% / 260 | 22% / 280 | 17% / 300 | 20% / 520 | Open grain shows through the engraving |
MDF | 22% / 320 | 16% / 350 | 12% / 380 | 12% / 600 | Uniform, no grain; heavy smoke, use extraction |
Notice what happens in the 100W column. The power percentages stop falling and the speeds climb sharply instead. That is not an inconsistency. It is the next section.
The Glass Tube Power Floor
Most DC glass CO2 tubes will not fire reliably below about 10 to 12 percent power. Below that threshold the tube misfires, output becomes inconsistent, and you get patchy engraving that looks like a focus problem but is not. On a 40W machine this is rarely an issue because light engraving still needs 18 to 20 percent. On a 100W machine, the arithmetic says basswood wants 7 percent, which is below where the tube behaves. |
The fix is to raise speed rather than lower power further. Keep the power at a stable 12 to 15 percent and increase the speed until the energy density comes back down to where you want it. This is why the 100W column runs at 500 to 600 mm/s where the 40W column runs at 300.
It is also why our own published figures for a Nova 100W look unusual next to a hobby chart: birch plywood at 16 percent and 1,200 mm/s, cherry at 20 percent and 1,200, MDF at 12 percent and 1,200. The power stays in the tube's comfortable range and the speed does the work. A machine with enough acceleration to hold 1,200 mm/s across a real engraving is doing something a slower gantry cannot.
RF tubes behave differently. An RF metal tube has far better low-end control and a much faster rise time, so it can run cleanly at low power where a glass tube stutters. If you engrave a lot of light, fine detail work, that difference is one of the real arguments for RF. Our machine range includes both.
Moving Settings Between Machines
When someone hands you settings from a different machine, convert rather than copy.
Work out the effective wattage of the original. Power percent multiplied by tube wattage. A setting of 20 percent on a 60W tube is 12 effective watts.
Hold that constant on your machine. On an 80W tube, 12 effective watts is 15 percent. On a 40W tube it is 30 percent. Keep the speed the same and you should land close.
If the new power percent falls below your tube's floor, raise it back to a stable 12 to 15 percent and increase the speed by the same ratio you raised the power. Going from a calculated 8 percent to a usable 16 percent means doubling the speed.
Then test. This gets you into the right neighborhood, not onto the right doorstep. Lens focal length, air assist pressure, machine acceleration and the particular board in front of you all move the result.
Cutting Settings
Cutting is a different problem from engraving. You want maximum energy at the cut line and minimum heat spreading sideways, which means high power and low speed rather than the reverse.
Material and Thickness | 40W | 60W | 80W | 100W |
|---|---|---|---|---|
3mm basswood | 75% / 12 | 55% / 15 | 45% / 20 | 40% / 25 |
3mm Baltic birch | 85% / 10 | 65% / 13 | 50% / 17 | 45% / 22 |
6mm Baltic birch | 95% / 5, 2 passes | 80% / 7 | 65% / 9 | 55% / 12 |
3mm MDF | 90% / 9 | 70% / 12 | 55% / 16 | 48% / 20 |
6mm MDF | 95% / 4, 2 passes | 85% / 6 | 70% / 8 | 60% / 11 |
6mm hardwood | Not practical | 90% / 4, 2 passes | 75% / 6 | 65% / 8 |
9mm hardwood | Not practical | Not practical | 90% / 3, 2 passes | 80% / 5 |
Two passes beats one slow pass on thick stock. A single very slow pass dumps heat into the kerf and produces a wide, heavily charred edge. Two faster passes let the material cool between them and give a noticeably cleaner cut. If a cut needs three or more passes, the machine is underpowered for that thickness and the edge quality will show it.
Resolution and DPI
DPI controls how many scan lines per inch the laser lays down. More lines means more detail and a longer job, and past a certain point it also means more heat in the same area.
254 DPI suits most general wood engraving. It is fast, it looks clean, and on open-grained woods like oak the grain hides any line structure anyway.
Use 300 to 400 DPI for fine detail and small text. This is where lettering under about 6mm starts to resolve properly.
For photographs, 300 to 320 DPI is the sweet spot. Higher does not help on wood because the material cannot hold the detail, and it adds heat that muddies the midtones.
Above 400 DPI, scan lines start to overlap on wood. The result is more burn rather than more detail. If you need more detail than 400 DPI gives, the limit is the material rather than the machine.
Air Assist
Air assist blows smoke and combustion products out of the beam path. Without it, smoke absorbs part of the beam before it reaches the wood and redeposits as soot, which is the main cause of hazy, inconsistent engraving.
For engraving, use low pressure, around 10 to 20 PSI. Enough to clear smoke, not so much that it fans the burn and widens the mark.
For cutting, use higher pressure, 30 PSI and above. You want to clear the kerf aggressively and cool the cut edge.
Too much air on a light engrave is a real and under-recognized problem. It cools the surface, reduces contrast, and can make a correctly set job look underpowered.
Running a Material Test Properly
Every setting in this article is a starting point. The test is what turns it into a number you can rely on.
Use the built-in material test. LightBurn and most laser software will engrave a grid of patches at stepped power and speed combinations in a single job. It takes a few minutes and replaces an afternoon of guessing.
Bracket around the chart value. If the table says 18 percent at 320 mm/s, run power from 10 to 30 percent against speed from 200 to 500. You want the correct setting somewhere in the middle of the grid, not at an edge.
Test on the actual board, not just the same species, the same board. Two sheets of birch ply from the same supplier can behave differently depending on the glue and the veneer thickness.
Label and keep the tiles. A drawer of labeled test tiles is the most useful reference material a laser shop builds. Write the machine, wattage, species, thickness, power, speed and DPI on the back of each one.
If you would rather start from tested numbers than build the library yourself, our materials library has 58 tested settings across 22 materials, as a free LightBurn file and a printable PDF. We also run sample material testing if you have a material you cannot find numbers for.
Why the Same Settings Fail on the Next Board
This is the question behind most settings searches, and it has four common answers.
Moisture content is the first. Wood brought in from a cold damp garage behaves differently from the same board after a week in a heated shop. Wetter wood takes more energy to mark and produces more smoke. If results drift seasonally, this is usually why.
Resin pockets are the second. Pine and cedar carry resin unevenly through the board. A setting that is perfect across most of a panel will char where it crosses a pocket. There is no setting that fixes this; choose the board or accept the variation.
Plywood glue lines are the third. Birch ply is veneer and adhesive in alternating layers, and the adhesive burns darker than the wood. Engrave deep enough to reach a glue line and you get a visible band. Keeping engraving shallow is the only reliable answer.
Grain direction and density variation is the fourth. Early wood and late wood in the same growth ring have different densities and take the beam differently. On open-grained species like oak this shows as texture in the engraving, which is often attractive and occasionally not.
Troubleshooting
Engraving is too light. Raise power or lower speed, one at a time, by about 20 percent. If it is already at sensible power and still faint, check focus first; a beam out of focus by a few millimeters loses a great deal of energy density.
Engraving is scorched and the edges are brown. Too much energy. Lower power or raise speed. Confirm air assist is actually flowing. Masking tape over the surface before engraving will keep smoke off the wood entirely.
Patchy, inconsistent engraving. If power is below about 12 percent on a glass tube, raise it and increase speed to compensate. Otherwise check the lens and mirrors for soot, and confirm the bed is level across the work area.
Cut will not go through. Lower the speed before raising the power. If two passes still will not do it, the material is thicker than that tube can handle cleanly.
Cut edges are heavily charred. Too slow, or air assist pressure too low. Try two faster passes instead of one slow one, and raise air pressure.
Fine text is illegible. Raise DPI to 300 or 400, and check the stroke width of the font. Below about 0.3mm the stroke is thinner than the beam can resolve on wood regardless of settings.
Darkening a Light Engraving
Light-colored woods often engrave fainter than people want. Three approaches, in order of how much trouble they cause.
Settings first. Lower the speed or raise the power in small steps. A second pass at the same settings also deepens the mark, though it widens it slightly.
Defocus slightly. Lowering the bed by one or two millimeters spreads the beam a little and produces a broader, softer, darker mark. Useful for bold graphics, not for fine detail.
Borax pre-treatment. Dissolve borax in hot water at roughly 2 to 3 percent, brush or spray it onto the surface, let it dry completely, then engrave. It genuinely works, and side-by-side tests in maker communities consistently rate it more effective than baking soda.
If you use borax, know the trade-offs. It gives off fumes when lasered that you do not want to breathe, so extraction matters more than usual. It leaves soot and residue that has to be cleaned off, and the result stays smeary until sealed, so plan to apply a clear coat afterwards. It also slightly darkens the whole board rather than only the engraved area. And it is restricted for consumer sale in some countries. Test it on a scrap before committing a finished piece to it. |
Preventing Burn Marks
Masking tape over the surface is the most effective method. Low-tack paper masking across the area before engraving keeps smoke residue off the wood entirely. Peel it afterwards. This is the single most effective method and the one production shops use.
Air assist, correctly set, is the second. Low pressure for engraving, enough to clear smoke without fanning the burn.
Raise the work off the bed. A honeycomb bed or pin supports stop reflected energy from the bed surface marking the back of the piece, which is where most mystery scorching comes from.
Keep the lens and mirrors clean. Soot on optics scatters the beam, costs energy density and makes you compensate with more power, which produces more smoke. It compounds.
Build Your Own Chart
The numbers in this article will get you close on most machines and most boards. What they will not do is replace a tested figure from your own machine on your own stock, because lens, acceleration, air pressure, bed height and the particular panel in front of you all move the result.
Run the material test, keep the tiles, label them properly, and within a few weeks you will have a reference that beats any chart on the internet, including this one. That is the actual answer to the settings question.
If you want a head start, the materials library linked above is a tested set rather than a guess. And if you are still choosing a machine, our guide to CO2 vs fiber lasers covers why CO2 is the right tool for wood.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best laser settings for engraving wood?
On a 60W CO2 laser, 15 to 25 percent power at 300 to 500 mm/s covers most species for a medium-contrast surface engrave. Hardwoods take more power than softwoods. On a different wattage, scale by effective wattage: multiply power percent by tube wattage and hold that figure constant.
Why do settings charts from other people not work on my machine?
Because power percent is a percentage of tube wattage, and most charts do not state the wattage. Twenty percent on a 40W tube is 8 effective watts; the same setting on a 100W tube is 20 watts. Convert by effective wattage before using anyone else's numbers.
What DPI should I use for engraving wood?
254 DPI for general work, 300 to 400 for fine detail and small text, and 300 to 320 for photographs. Above 400 the scan lines overlap on wood and you get more burn rather than more detail.
How do I make laser engraving on wood darker?
Start with settings: lower the speed or raise the power in small steps, or add a second pass. Defocusing by a millimetre or two also darkens the mark at the cost of sharpness. A borax solution brushed on before engraving darkens it further, though it produces fumes, leaves residue that needs sealing, and tints the whole board.
How do I stop wood scorching when I engrave?
Mask the surface with low-tack paper tape before engraving and peel it off afterwards. Make sure air assist is flowing, keep engraving power as low as will do the job, raise the work off the bed on a honeycomb or pins, and keep the optics clean.
Why is my engraving patchy on a high-wattage machine?
Most likely the power is set below the tube's minimum firing threshold. DC glass tubes fire unreliably below roughly 10 to 12 percent. Raise the power back into a stable range and increase the speed to compensate rather than continuing to drop power.
Should I sand wood before laser engraving?
A light sanding of rough stock helps, because an uneven surface sits at varying distances from the focal point and engraves inconsistently. Pre-finished and planed boards need nothing. Remove all dust before the board goes in the machine.
How many passes should I use to cut wood?
One if the machine can manage it, two for thicker stock. Two faster passes give a cleaner edge than one very slow pass because the material cools between them. If a cut needs three or more passes, the tube is underpowered for that thickness and the edge quality will suffer.
Does wood moisture content affect engraving?
Yes, noticeably. Damper wood needs more energy to mark and produces more smoke. A board brought in from a cold garage will not behave like the same board after a week acclimatizing in a heated shop. If your results drift with the seasons, this is usually the reason.
Can a fiber laser engrave wood?
Not usefully. Fiber lasers at 1,064 nm are designed for metals and some plastics, and wood absorbs that wavelength poorly and inconsistently. CO2 at 10,600 nm is the correct tool for wood, and it is why CO2 machines dominate the woodworking side of the industry.
