 What is up? Welcome back. Do it to do a build or make it. So do we. And we have new videos each week. This week we have another Patreon request from Helen. Hey Helen. Helen wants to know, how do you fill an engraving with powder coating? Now we tried this project at least a year ago, at least a year ago. And we spent two full days trying to get this to work over and over again. And every single attempt failed. Now she says we but she really means me. And by the time I was done it looked like I spent the weekend at Studio 54. They were as fluorescent green and white. Powder coat all over everything. Me, the lasers, several lasers. All I needed was a black light and some rave music. But since then we've learned a few things and we've got it figured out and we're going to show you how to get it done. So what is powder coat and why do we want to use it? Powder coat is exactly what it sounds like. It's powdered paint. It's actually powdered plastic. It's used to coat things with an electrostatic powder like metal parts for engines, car parts, bikes. Everybody's had a bike and you know how durable that paint is. That's powder coat. It's heated up to 400 degrees to get it to actually cure around the metal. And it's very durable. It's UV resistant. It's nick and scratch resistant. It's pretty cool stuff. So we're going to use that to fill some engraves. Things like coasters or cutting boards. Anything that's wood engraved. But you want to fill that engraving and add some color to it. Today we're going to use that powder coat to engrave on these wooden coasters. So step one we're going to gather all of our supplies. We needed these wooden coasters and some powder coat. I picked this up on Amazon. It's like a pound of it for a couple of dollars. Yeah it's going to be in the links below. You can go grab yours. Step two we're going to make our initial engrave. Now the one thing we did learn is that you cannot use air assist with this project. Zero. Because that air is going to blow that powder everywhere. And that's partly what's going to make a mess and it's going to damage your laser potentially. We struggled last year with that. So we know that we can use the X-Tool S1 40 watt diode laser and turn off that air assist completely. So we're going to use that laser to show you how to do this project. But we know it's going to get a good engrave the first time and there's no air assist. But don't worry stay tuned. Keep following along if you cannot turn your air assist off. We've got a second option for you. For our initial engrave on the coaster we're going to focus on the coaster itself. Then we're going to use 30 power. We're going to use 150 millimeters per second. We're going to use 180 lines per centimeter. Let's frame it and run it. Time to powder coat. I'm just going to spoon some of this powder coat on and then scrape it around with a squeegee. Try to get in all the little cracks and crevices. I'm going to scrape away the excess and I'm going to try to keep it a nice even coat throughout the engrave. Here's the gold in this project. To engrave the powder coat on your wood you're going to want a low speed low power no air. Slow and low there is the tempo. So we have found through trial and error. What we found with our X-Tool S1 40 watt diode laser is that we're going to use 6% power 12 millimeters per second and 120 lines per centimeter. And here's another big key is you're going to have to set it out of focus offset focus by a half inch. What if I can't turn off my air assist Kim? Well that's where option two comes in. We're going to do that same engrave with our board masked and then we're going to add the powder and then we're going to hit it with a heat gun. But the heat gun's got to have like very low air but really hot and this one's perfect for that. We have some final thoughts on this project. The first one being the laser on laser took a lot longer than the laser and the heat gun a lot longer. It was a lot harder to figure out my settings for the laser on laser. The heat gun I just heated it up. Now once you get it if you were using the same wood and the same powder on a consistent basis maybe it would be fine. For this final run of the laser curing method we used a different wood than what we had been using on testing which was this pine board and we found that our engrave was a little bit deeper with this is akashia wood which meant that the same settings that we had been using didn't work as well. Now it did harden and there's no powder here but it didn't make it shiny and glistening so it didn't fully cure like it did on the pine or like it did with the heat gun method. So you know maybe I should have upped the power just a little bit and then it would have been a little bit shinier and if I'm going to do these coasters all day every day maybe that works fine. Yeah I think we probably should have tested with the same material because every material is different and I think the depth of your engrave has a lot to do with your speed and power used on the powder. So this while this does work and we kind of showed you the tips the tricks that go along with it go slow go low speed low power and then and then what I don't know if I would ever use this method. This will probably be the last time I ever use that method. I might use this method again. This came out okay and it was pretty quick and I think it it looks pretty good. I might use that one again. Yeah the only difference here is that you do have to mask this first but we did run a gold through so we didn't show you this but I'll give you a little close-up here. We did try a gold powder and it seemed to leave like a like a gold haze. Yeah so I think for something like this I would need to mask anyway. Yeah or I think that engrave was deep enough where you could probably sand it and it'd be okay. Yes I do think I can sand that right off. I don't think I would use this for anything intricate only basic logos nothing intricate where you might lose pieces if you had to sand it. If you had to sand it. Yeah all right. So this is how you do it you can give it a try if you've already done it and you've had great success leave us a comment down below let us know what you did send us a picture because I would love to see it. I agree with Garrett it's okay but I think I'd use the heat gun next time. Big thanks to all of our patrons we love you guys thanks for supporting this channel and we are out out of time so if you're not going to join us for the patron after show we will see you next week we'll do it build it and make it again and those coasters are too small to balance. I'm going to balance this piece of wood. I will balance this piece of wood on a coaster.