Welcome back to the craft room and today’s LOKLik iEngrave — Engraving Test Results post. Back in November 2025 I entered a Facebook giveaway and won a LOKLik iEngrave Laser machine. It arrived in early December and I filmed a full unboxing video. Before I had a chance to start the blog post and get everything edited, I lost all but one clip! Even though the video was gone, I continued engraving some test pieces and that’s what I want to share with you today. Let’s jump right in and take a look at how a number of materials engraved using the default Idea Studio settings.
What Comes in the LOKLik iEngrave Box?
The iEngrave laser came very well packaged, as you can see in the photo below. Nothing was out of place, and even though there was a hole in the side of the box, the foam padding was thick enough to protect everything inside.
Below is another photo showing everything that came in the box:
- 10 watt Diode module
- Safety glasses
- Tie wraps
- USB Cable
- 4 hex wrenches
- Safety keys
- Double ended wrench
- Small wooden brush
- TF card & Card reader
- WiFi antenna
- Power adapter
- 3 small pieces of basswood
First Basswood Engraving Test Results
After connecting the machine to our WiFi with my iPad, I chose a cute little butterfly stamp design from the Idea Studio library. Using the default settings for basswood — power at 75%, speed at 7500 mm/min, dynamic power on, and one pass — resulted in an amazing image.
Right after I started the engraving, I realized I had not set the material height. I hit the emergency stop, adjusted the depth, re-framed, and started again, which is why the top looks a little extra.
Solving WiFi Connection Issues
After that first test, I planned to engrave other items the next day, but suddenly I could not get the machine to reconnect to WiFi. I knew the iEngrave needs 2.4 GHz WiFi, not 5G, but that’s out of my wheelhouse. My husband helped adjust our router and even turned off 5G entirely — still no connection.
I emailed support and after a few days of back-and-forth, updating the firmware finally fixed the issue. Since then, WiFi has been solid and I’ve been engraving with no issues.
During that support window, I still wanted to test the machine, so we switched to the included USB cable and my husband’s laptop for the next engraves.
Engraving a Bamboo Cutting Board
My next test was a bamboo cutting board that I purchased a few years ago from Dollar Tree. The default settings for this material are power at 50%, speed at 5000 mm/min, dynamic power on, and one pass. This one really tested my patience. For some reason, it repeatedly stopped engraving around 35% of the image. After multiple tries, I started wondering if the problem was how I imported the design into Idea Studio. I re-downloaded the design directly to the laptop from Creative Fabrica and tried again.
This time the design fully engraved, but inside the banner it’s supposed to say “Few Have,” with the full phrase reading “Many have eaten here Few have died.” After opening the file in Affinity Designer, I realized I’d need to edit the SVG to get that detail to show, so I set that project aside for another time — because I really love that design!
One note: because bamboo has natural color variations, the engraving looks darker in some areas than others, especially in the banner. Good reminder for larger boards.
Testing Engraving on Basswood Rounds
I decided to do both the front and back of this basswood round that I got from my sister. Again, I used the default settings of power at 75%, speed at 7500 mm/min, dynamic power on, and one pass. For the first side, I used an adorable Christmas reindeer image from Creative Fabrica and it engraved beautifully.
For the second side, I used another fun kitchen saying. There’s more charring on this side, probably due to the thicker image lines. I haven’t cleaned it yet, but a quick sanding should remove most of that.
Engraving Thin and Thick Leather
The next two tests were with some leather scraps we had up in the garage. Even though both pieces are different thicknesses, the default settings are the same for both: 40% power and a speed of 8000 mm/min. The first piece is a thin section from an old leather chair and I wasn’t sure how well it would engrave. At first it didn’t look promising because it was very dark. However, after wiping it with a dry paper towel, the engraving popped out nicely.
The second leather scrap is much thicker and it produced some amazing results. I really love how the engraved initials have that deep, rich, consistent color you expect on leather.
Engraving Solid Red Oak Results
While my husband was rummaging around the garage for the leather scraps, he came across a small piece of solid red oak. The default settings for solid wood are 75% power with a speed of 7500 mm/min. While the oak engraved fine, my husband wanted to see if we could make it darker. We tried three passes at the default settings, and one pass at 100% power. It engraved deeper but not with a consistently darker color, which tells me oak just doesn’t char as dark as some woods. That seems to be more of a material property than a machine issue.
Using Stucki Dithering on MDF Clipboard
My husband asked if I could engrave a logo onto a clipboard. He generated the design in Grok AI, but even though he requested black-and-white, it downloaded as black-and-yellow with the black filling the entire background. My first attempt to invert it in the new Affinity Suite failed on basswood.
After about an hour of tweaking, I converted it back to a clean black-and-white image and rounded the background corners. Before hitting the clipboard, I decided to do another test, so I flipped the basswood round over and it produced a much better result.
Then I moved to the MDF clipboard with the default settings set to 75% power and a speed of 7500 mm/min. One thing I noticed when sending the file was the option for “Black and White” or “Stucki.” I had no idea what that meant. After some research and asking in the HTVRont community:
Stucki uses a dithering algorithm that engraves as tiny dots instead of lines, which is better for detail and photo-style engravings.
That’s what I used, and I love how the clipboard turned out.
Here is a closeup where you can clearly see the dotted pattern created by the laser with the Stucki algorithm.
Final Thoughts and What’s Next
Overall, these first engraving tests were both helpful and surprisingly fun. In terms of results, my clear favorites were the basswood, the thicker leather, and the MDF clipboard. Each of those materials took the engraving well and produced clean, detailed results with the default settings.
One final note worth mentioning is the smell factor. Wood left a mild campfire-type smell that dissipated quickly, but real leather produced a much stronger, more intense odor. With that said, I’m looking forward to trying more materials, adjusting settings, and pushing this machine a little further. I also want to mention that I’ve purchased a honeycomb board, and I’m looking forward to testing how well this machine can cut different materials.
Thank you so much for joining me for today’s LOKLik iEngrave — Engraving Test Results post. If you’ve worked with a laser engraver before, I’d love to hear about your experience. Did you stick to engraving, or did you do a lot of cutting as well? And if you haven’t used one yet, which of the materials I tested today stood out to you the most?
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