Find or make a strong silhouette image

Scale text to fit into the shape.

With the test still selected, choose Make With Mesh

A new window will pop up. You can change the rows and the columns based on what you need. I used 1 row and 4 columns for my name. Select Preview and then OK

Using the Direct Select tool adjust the vertices and modify text to fit in the body of the silhouette.

Adjust the text to fill in your shape.

Expand the text. Select the text, and Object > Expand

I added my first name as well . . .

Select both text groups.

With the text objects still selected, Expand them. Object > Expand

A new window pops up, select "OK"

Change the line to absolute red to cut out on the laser and the text letters to absolute black to engrave on the laser.

FINISHED!

If you choose to cut out the letters, change the fill color to "None" and the Line color to absolute "red" for everything.

Here is the problem with cutting out letters, the centers of some letters will fall out . . .

To fix this, we can use the eraser to cut from the letters.

Select the text and erase sections of the letters that have closed holes.

Now all the holes are opened up and they will not fall off when we cut it out. We just a created a stencil.

Finished!!!