DIY custom packaging: laser engraving rubber stamps on the xTool M1 Ultra

Here's the TL;DR

• I used an xTool M1 Ultra 10W laser to cut some custom rubber ink stamps.
• Rubber used: low-smell, laser-engravable rubber from Amazon (I used this one)
• Laser settings for xTool M1 Ultra 10W laser, 100% power, 60 mm/s (test your own laser and material!)
• To engrave deep enough I had to do 1 pass, then clean all the debris and repeat.
• Use air assist if you have one (avoid the intermediate cleanup step between passes).
• To design the stamps, remember to flip the design horizontally to get the correct stamp. I learned this the hard way.

Laser-engraved vs 3D-printed stamps

I've attempted making stamps with my 3D printer before (FDM), but I've always found it difficult, especially for smaller stamps like the ones you could use on a corner of a small shipping box.

When you print the stamps horizontally, the resolution you can get is limited by your nozzle size, and at this small scale, it is very difficult to get sharp details. In addition to that, the top/bottom surfaces will inevitably have small ridges or patterns that will transfer to the stamp. You could sand them to make them smooth, but again, this is hard to do for small details. And no, printing vertically to get higher resolution didn't give me better results.

There's also another disadvantage to 3D printed stamps: many filaments don't catch the ink well.

Laser engraving rubber stamps

Before starting, it's important to mention that laser engraving rubber can release some very noxious gases, particularly if the rubber is not made specifically for engraving.

Make sure you are on a well-ventilated area, and that you can exhaust and possibly filter the fumes.

To make the stamps, I purchased a sheet of laser-engravable rubber on Amazon. It was advertised as low odor and special for laser cutting and engraving.

When it arrived, I was concerned about the smell. The sheet of rubber itself has a very strong smell, but all the reviews said it didn't leave burnt rubber smells when engraved, so I gave it a try. Just to be sure, I vented the exhaust fumes from my laser outside.

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Another thing to consider is just how messy the engraving is. At least with the material I used and my laser settings, the whole work area was covered in rubber dust. It is so much that running two consecutive passes is impractical unless you clean the mess before running the next pass.

I used a vacuum cleaner for that. Of course, you have to be very careful when vacuuming to avoid moving the material, which would ruin your next pass.

I'm guessing that having an air assist you could do the two passes or more consecutively without this problem.

Finding the right laser settings

As with any new material, I created a material test array to find the right engraving settings (laser power and speed). XCS does have a preset for laser-engravable rubber, but I wanted to check if there was any difference anyways.

I created a small 8 x 8 mm box with a letter A inside. This would allow me to check for how detailed the engraving was for each setting.

The winner was the highest power and lowest speed combination: 100% power, 60 mm/s. Perhaps in the future I'll test even slower speeds to see if I can reduce the laser power. Running it at 100% isn't ideal, but this was just my first prototyping for rubber stamps.

Testing engraving depths

Having found a good setting for achieving decently detailed engravings, I went ahead and engraved a first prototype of my stamp. I ran a single pass, but the engraving was too shallow and the stamp left inconsistent results.

In particular, when you pressed the stamps with enough force to achieve a well-defined image of the symbols, a lot of the empty space around was transferred to the paper too.

So I ended up doing two passes, which gave me more acceptable results like the ones in the header image of this post.

Backstory

I'm writing this after the thread I posted over a month ago had over 1 M views. I figured people could be interested in more details.

I used these stamps to add recycling information to the packaging I’m using on my store. This is mandatory in EU. If you live or sell to consumers in Italy, this is especially important as you could get some hefty fines simply for not complying with this. Check out the link to the official D'Lgs 152/06 art. 261 comma 3 below.

I want to comply with the regulations to avoid any kind of fines, but I’m still not in a position where I can order custom boxes with these symbols pre-printed on them.

So I decided to make some stamps using my laser engraver.

Bonus: Designing the stamps on XCS

I still haven't purchased a Lightburn license, but I know it gives you a lot more control over the engraving settings than xTool Creative Studio. However, for this project I used XCS because it came with the laser machine, and I didn't need to do anything too fancy (at least for now).

I needed recycling symbols I could borrow for free to use them in my shipping boxes. I used the SVG files available on Wikipedia, as they are clearly marked as "public domain". Let's use the following one as an example.

To create the stamp on xTool Creative Space, I just imported it into a new project.

Let's see the steps needed to create a stamp of this symbol. We'll work as we would normally to engrave any design, using the "Lasering on flat surface" mode and selecting "Engrave" as processing mode for our images.

The first step is flipping the symbol horizontally (very important! I learned the hard way).