How to get the best etching on glassware

Hello guys,

I have couple questions that I have had trouble with and cant find anywhere the answer for.

I own a Trotec laser speedy 300 80 watt. I do a lot of whisky and pint glass etching. Couple days ago I started experimenting with Pictures on glass. However when I fix the pictures to be etch on there doesn't inverted and all that. I don't get the results I am looking for.

I also use Photoshop and illustrator to do all my jobs. I have hard time with coral

Can anybody steer me toward the right direction.

I have attached the samples I worked on. Attachment 373866Attachment 373867Attachment 373868Attachment 373869

one word - sandcarving - or is that two words?...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by zack wallen

Hello guys,

I have couple questions that I have had trouble with and cant find anywhere the answer for.

I own a Trotec laser speedy 300 80 watt. I do a lot of whisky and pint glass etching. Couple days ago I started experimenting with Pictures on glass. However when I fix the pictures to be etch on there doesn't inverted and all that. I don't get the results I am looking for.

I also use Photoshop and illustrator to do all my jobs. I have hard time with coral

Can anybody steer me toward the right direction.

I have attached the samples I worked on. Attachment 373866Attachment 373867Attachment 373868Attachment 373869

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Just invert the pic before engraving... BUT, beware because when you do, the white background will be black, which will engrave. Only fix I've found for this problem is to invert the pic as you're working on it, then cut the background out, then save it. This ends up as a negative with white background. If all the background is part of the pic, then it doesn't matter, just make it negative...

When I work with pics I always save a pos and neg version each with no background, then I have one that works regardless.

that all said, pics on glass are hard to get right...

Engraving a photo on an actual glass is just about the most difficult thing you can laser engrave.

Do a search for posts by Bill Cunningham. He is the best I've ever seen engraving glass.

Welcome to Sawmill Creek.

Attachment 374049Attachment 374050


Thank you guys for your valuable response.

This the latest test I have come across. I kinda like where it is going.

What do you guys think that I should adjust on this.

I followed A guy Named Mike from Trotec Canada he uses masking the glass

Thank you

I think you've made real progress. I'm not good at doing glass and photos so I shouldn't offer advice.

Hi Zack, try this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5v9pBVopFU it helped me with engraving photos on glass. Mike Clarke takes you through the process step by step.

Better than mine! Looks pretty good in fact. I've been working on a granite piece and struggling to get it right also. At least you can drink out of a second.....

I've never tried the transfer mask but will give it a go. His mask vs no mask example appears flawed, though, drastically favoring the mask example. No settings were ever mentioned but he presumably optimized them for the mask setup, meaning there had to be enough power to burn through the tape and get good microfractures in the glass. Assuming both images were identical and so using the same settings, that would make the no mask image overpowered, blowing out most of the detail, and that is exactly what we saw. I quit using damp paper, dish soap, liquid mask and such because it was extra work and often inconsistent for reasons he mentioned, and spent time to dial in settings for specific glass items that I do frequently (I typically will not do one-off glass items because there's no way to optimize settings and no way to guess what sort of results you will get; you only get one try if you overpower it and you may or may not be able to improve things if your first try seems underpowered because you usually have to pick the item up to really see what you got and then realignment is an issue). His mask results do appear better than my typical unmasked results but his no mask example was obviously blown out so it's hard to say how much better his masking technique works on his machine than unmasked could be.

We've found that going into a little bit of grey on the image can help with etching onto glass.