Good morning fellow Makers.
I was brainstorming Halloween gifts and thought my past clients may like a custom laser image of their house or family name and a Halloween message on a small pumpkin. Has anyone tried to laser images on gourds? Lightburn seems to support it. Thoughts / suggestions welcome
Focusing would be challenging, but theoretically it’d work. Just don’t eat it afterwards 
Cutting a stencil out of card stock and painting may be a good option if you’d like a larger engraving than you can focus for given the shape of a pumpkin.
Huh. Could you find pumpkins that would fit in the rotary fixture? (I haven’t taken the Rotary class…)
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You theoretically could, but with the ribs you’ll still end up with some focusing woes. Would be a fun project.
Brb going to HEB, lol.
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co2 laser will definitely absorb effectively but the results seem unpredictable- it could blacken or just cut into the surface. either way, it’s a mark.
the depth of focus on a 2" lens co2 laser is roughly+/- 2.54mm. I find that overly generous, the cut will be affected significantly that far from the ideal focal point.
it’s only flat enough if you limit the marking to a small area. a rotary could, in theory, let you mark a band around the circumference with limited height. but the pumpkin has longitudinal lobes that vary height in a rotary, I don’t know how it would mount, and it’s never perfectly round.
so, hard to see how the rotary would work. the usable area would be limited by how flat of an area you could find on a particular pumpkin, and jig it up with that area parallel to the laser xy gantry plane.
4th axis cnc
I’m with @JoeN for the CNC and also use an o-flute end mill along a very slow speed & feed