LightBurn Settings for Wood, Leather, and Acrylic: The Complete 2026 Speed & Power Guide

Getting your first laser engraving project to look professional isn't about spending more on equipment — it's about understanding how speed, power, and frequency interact with different materials. Most beginners waste time and materials because they're using generic default settings. This guide fixes that.

We'll cover LightBurn settings — the most popular laser engraving software — for three of the most common materials: wood, leather, and acrylic. Every setting recommendation is based on real-world testing and the specs of popular desktop machines like the Laservii L1 series.

Before You Start: Understanding the Key Settings

LightBurn has three primary variables that control your engraving quality:

• Speed (mm/min): How fast the laser head moves. Slower = deeper/darker engraving, but takes longer and can cause more scorching.
• Power (%): Laser intensity. Higher power = more material removal, but too much causes burning and discoloration.
• Frequency (Hz) — for diode lasers: Pulse rate of the laser. Higher frequencies produce smoother lines for engraving; lower frequencies are better for cutting.

The goal is finding the combination that gives you clean, crisp marks without scorching the surrounding material. There is no universal setting — every material, thickness, and machine will behave differently.

Wood: The Most Forgiving Material

Wood is where most people start, and for good reason — it forgives more variation in settings than any other material. But "forgiving" doesn't mean "set it and forget it."

Engraving Wood (line mode or fill mode)

• Speed: 300–600 mm/min for detailed work; 800–1,200 mm/min for faster, lighter engravings
• Power: 40–70% for most woods; up to 80–100% for dense hardwoods like maple or walnut
• Passes: 1 pass for light marks; 2 passes for darker, deeper engravings
• DPI: 300–500 DPI for text; 300 DPI for most images

Pro tip: plywood tends to scorch more than solid hardwood because the glue layers burn at lower temperatures than the wood itself. Lower your speed or power by about 15% when working with plywood, or use multiple light passes instead of one aggressive pass.

Cutting Wood with a Diode Laser

• Speed: 200–400 mm/min for 3mm plywood; 100–200 mm/min for 6mm
• Power: 80–100%
• Passes: 1 pass for thin material; 2–4 passes for thicker cuts, cleaning the lens between each pass

The Laservii L1 Pro at 12W can cut through approximately 5mm plywood in a single clean pass at 300 mm/min and 100% power. The same machine at 7W handles 3mm plywood comfortably.

Best Woods for Laser Engraving

• Walnut: Excellent contrast, rich dark engravings
• Cherry: Warm tones, gorgeous results especially for logos
• Maple: Light wood, produces high-contrast light marks
• Basswood: Soft, affordable, great for detailed carving
• Bamboo: Dense but takes engraving well; minimal scorching

Leather: Precision Without Contact

Leather is one of the most satisfying materials to engrave because the laser doesn't physically touch the material — no distortion, no tool wear, and you can achieve levels of detail impossible with hand tools.

Engraving Leather (vegetable-tanned, split, or top-grain)

• Speed: 400–800 mm/min
• Power: 30–60% (leather darkens rather than being cut, so lower power is better)
• DPI: 300–500 DPI for fine detail
• Passes: 1–2 passes. A second pass deepens the mark but watch for scorching.

Critical: Always do a test burn on a scrap piece of the same leather. Vegetable-tanned leather behaves very differently from bonded leather or suede. What works on a wallet won't work on a belt.

Cutting Leather

• Speed: 100–200 mm/min
• Power: 80–100%
• Passes: Multiple light passes (2–3) rather than one aggressive pass, especially for thicker leather

Leather Engraving Tips

• Natural vegetable-tanned leather produces the best results — it darkens to a rich brown or black
• Start conservative: 50% power, 500 mm/min and adjust up
• Thicker leather needs slower speeds and/or more passes
• The smell is significant — engrave in a ventilated space

Acrylic: Clean Cuts, Crisp Edges

Acrylic is where diode lasers really shine — literally. The result is a frosted, translucent mark that looks precision-machined. Both cast and extruded acrylic work, but they behave differently.

Engraving Acrylic

• Speed: 300–600 mm/min for vector engraving; 600–1,000 mm/min for raster engraving of images
• Power: 30–60% for light frosting marks; 60–100% for deeper, more visible marks
• DPI: 300–600 DPI for raster images

Cast acrylic produces a white/crystalline mark where the laser hits; extruded acrylic tends to produce clearer, more transparent results. Test both to see which you prefer aesthetically.

Cutting Acrylic

• Speed: 200–400 mm/min for 3mm; 80–150 mm/min for 6mm
• Power: 80–100%
• Air assist: Essential for acrylic — it keeps the lens clean and prevents melting along the cut edge

Clean, polished acrylic edges come from slow, single-pass cuts with air assist running. Fast cuts or multiple passes create flame marks along the edges.

Common Acrylic Mistakes

• Too much power: Melts the edges, producing brown/yellow discoloration instead of clear cuts
• No air assist: Smoke buildup causes pitting and roughness on the cut surface
• Cutting acrylic too thick in one pass: Leads to incomplete cuts and burnt edges

The Single Most Important Tip: Test Before You Engrave

No guide — including this one — can give you exact settings for your specific machine, material batch, and environment. The density of wood varies. Leather thickness varies. Even acrylic from different suppliers behaves differently.

Create a test grid in LightBurn before every new project:

• Make a 5×5 grid of small squares
• Keep speed constant, vary power from 20% to 100% across the columns
• Keep power constant, vary speed from 200 to 1,200 mm/min down the rows
• Label each square and engrave on your actual material

This 10-minute test will give you perfect settings every time — far better than any generic table could provide.

Equipment Recommendations

If you're looking for a machine that handles all three materials with quality results, the Laservii L1 Pro at 12W delivers strong performance across wood, leather, and acrylic. Its 300×300mm work area and 0.01mm precision are sufficient for both detailed artwork and functional product marking.

For higher-volume work or batch production, the enclosed Laservii L1 Plus with its 16.5"×16.5" work area and 24W power handles thicker materials and larger pieces more efficiently, with the added benefit of contained smoke and odor.

Both machines are fully compatible with LightBurn — the setup takes under 10 minutes and the software's material test mode makes finding optimal settings straightforward.

Summary Table: Starting Points for Common Materials

Material	Engraving Speed	Engraving Power	Cutting Speed	Cutting Power
Basswood/Plywood	400-600 mm/min	50-70%	200-400 mm/min	80-100%
Walnut/Cherry	300-500 mm/min	40-60%	150-300 mm/min	80-100%
Veg-tan Leather	400-800 mm/min	30-60%	100-200 mm/min	80-100%
Cast Acrylic	300-600 mm/min	30-60%	200-400 mm/min	80-100%

Use these as starting points, not gospel. Run your test grid, find what works, and document it for future reference.