Engrave Wood with an Unmodified 3D Printer

It hasn’t escaped the notice of makers that 3D printers, CNC routers, and laser engravers are all pretty similar. Snapmaker launched on that concept, offering different toolheads to make a single machine perform three different functions. But you can actually engrave wood with the 3D printer you already own, without modifying the hardware at all.

This video from Arseniy’s Lab demonstrates the idea on a Bambu Lab A1 3D printer, but you should be able to do the same thing on almost any FFF/FDM 3D printer model.

This technique doesn’t engrave wood like a CNC router or laser machine would, but does something more like wood burning. A 3D printer’s nozzle gets very hot and if you touch that to wood, it will leave a little burned dot. Tell the printer to burn hundreds of dots in the correct places and you can create an entire image.

That doesn’t require any modification to the printer itself, assuming you have control over the homing sequence, bed height, and Z offset.

But you do need to run custom G-code, since your slicer isn’t built for this kind of task. To create that G-code, Arseniy built a web app that anyone can use. Just set the parameters and upload an image, then the software will spit out G-code for you to load on printer.

This definitely isn’t good for your nozzle, so make sure you have a spare for when you want to get back to 3D printing. But it is a great way to create some cool art with a machine that you already own. It also works for some other materials, like leather!