CerMark color fill on glass

There was a little bit of a buzz floating around on color fill on glass so I thought I would share with you guys a piece I did for my Mom’s birthday. There are probably many other ways to color fill, I used CerMark because that's the product I make and I'm very familiar with it. For the sake of this post I'm going to try to keep it as basic as I can and I figured I can answer questions later. It’s been quite a while now since I lasered this piece of glass but searching through my artwork, I’m pretty sure I remember how I completed it.

The first thing I had to do clean up the Artwork. If you look at the original painting, you can see a lot of excess colors in the sky and I knew if I Lasered this it would end up looking cloudy.;) So the second picture you can see I used CorelPaint and cleaned the painting. I also spruced up the contrast and sharpened the image a bit because laser’s seem to like a lot of contrast. Next I resampled the image to increase the DPI to about 300 and resized it according to the size of the final piece of glass. This is crucial because resizing the image in CorelDraw screws with the final DPI of the image. Almost done, in CorelDraw under bitmaps and mode I changed the image to CMYK. This allows me to work with the color separations in the print driver section. I almost forgot to mention that I ran a couple of test grids of the bronze, (LMC-6001P) and black (LMC-6044P) on a scrap piece of glass so I can pick and choose the colors I would like. I choose a dark grayish and black power/speed setting for the black and blue tones and a dark copper-ish color and goldish colors from the bronze power grid that I used for the yellow and magenta. Finally I sprayed the black on, set my print driver to print separations (Color Tab at top), set my power settings for each color, opened the print preview and printed each sheet individually. When done I washed off the excess material sprayed on the bronze, realigned it in the machine and did the same procedure as I did for the black. I hope you enjoy this little tutorial!
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Steve

Thanks very much.

Nicely done, Steve...

Thanks for the explanation, Steve. Did you follow the settings recommended by Ferro or tweak them as a result of your testing? One more question - did you do the work on the front or back of the glass?

This is a great example of how fine art can be handled in a laser, making use of color seps and colored Cermark.

cheers, dee

Thanks Guys,

Dee, I am not an advocate of using setting recommendations. I think settings are just to give you a starting point and hope that the material will work, I don't like taking chances, especially if I had a piece custom cut to fit in a window. The longer I work with companies and their lasers the more and more I am convinced that a trial and error step must be done before anyone can dive into laser bonding, or any laser work for that matter. For instance, I would go to a company that is having trouble getting a mark with a 50 watt Laser and recommend a power and speed setting and nothing will happen, no bond and poor marks. So we end up doing a test grid and find a good setting to work with and have no problems afterwards. But here is the kicker, I would end up going to another company with a 50 watt laser (same type of laser) and recommend the newly revised settings and again poor bonded marks. Again I would have to do a test grid and find the correct setting. I guess my point is I think there are a lot of variables involved in getting a good solid bonded mark. So the best way to find out is doing a test grid consisting of as many power and speed settings you can come up with and finding something that works with your laser. I like doing a test grid with our lasers as soon as something changes like replacing our laser tube. That way if something is not working the way it usually does then you can go back to your original test grid and compare the marks at those settings. I like to call it "Getting to know your Laser." ... I think it has a nice ring to it, don't you? ;) I know everyone's busy and no one's really working with thier laser everyday. This makes finding those fine tune marks difficult or time consuming but I do believe a little time playing around, testing your laser's limits in the beginning, with all substrates, whether it's using our materials or marking something else, will be less time wasted on mistakes, and getting good results in the end will be much easier. I know I kinda went on a little rant sorry if this is too much.

Oh sorry Dee, and I marked the front of the glass.

Steve, your comments not only make sense, but they echo what a lot of us recommend to new owners - get to know your own laser by testing! Glad you posted it and I know it will help someone who has not done such tests before.

Thanks, dee

We should make pamphlets and on the cover should be - "So you finally bought a laser, now what..." and then give some hints and tricks.

Dee, I also think you guys do such a great job on this forum helping people out with the business. So much in fact, when I see someone post a problem I will open the thread and see you guys are right on top of it! This is such a great place to find out information with what ever problems your facing in the laser industry. You guys do a fantastic job! keep up the great work!

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Originally Posted by Steve Rozwood

We should make pamphlets and on the cover should be - "So you finally bought a laser, now what..." and then give some hints and tricks.

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This would be a BIG help! Especially where it involves marking metal, glass and ceramic - these are always more complicated than wood or acrylic.