glass engraving sample

[Kevin Clark2227]

If you plan to use a non-solid background, colorfill is the only way to go. A photo does not provide proper contrast for the eye to separate the background from the foreground.

What is the proper fill to use?
I have Pro Color Fill & Stone Fill from Laserbits or something else?

[Bruce Clumpner]

If you use transfer tape, you can simply use rattle-can spray paint. Try to use a color that will show the highest contrast against the section of the photo your text will be in front of.

[Dan Hintz]

If you use transfer tape, you can simply use rattle-can spray paint. Try to use a color that will show the highest contrast against the section of the photo your text will be in front of.

And if you've already taken the tape off or forgot it altogether, just rub in some acrylic paint.

[Keith Colson]

One thing I want to try, also an idea for you as it looks like you would want some really permanent colour, paint will fade outside over time.

Engrave the glass. coat it with some coloured glass powder (pottery people use it) re-laser the same spot to melt the powder into the glass. Repeat if more contrast is need. This is just an idea. Anyone tried it?

Cheers
Keith

[Hilton Lister]

Just to be completely contrary, I use 1000 dpi, 100% power, 100speed, 2 passes. If it still doesn't look good, wire brush, then fill with silver Rub n Buff.
I have never been able to get a good finish with the laser using any other settings. Sandblasting is always better.

[David Rust]

You should always run files as RGB... CMYK does not have a 1:1 transfer to a machine that expects RGB, so you can get weird things happening, like random dots in the background of an image that was white in CMYK, but is a very light shade of gray in RGB.

600 dpi is a lot for glass. I'd drop that back to 300dpi.

You should be at 70-80% black. 100% puts the dots too close together.



The chipping you're seeing is the result of the last two items... too much power in a contained space.

Dan,

This is interesting... I did a big order of beer mugs at (70% gray, 70 power, 70speed, 300dpi), they came out pretty good but I wasn't happy, I tried the dish soap trick and it helped a little, probably not worth the extra time it took to hand wash every mug. A week later I ran a sample for a customer and messed up the settings (70% gray, 70 power, 70speed, 1200dpi no-soap) I let the job continue instead of stopping... I shocked at the results, it came out amazing, very frosted without any chips, I was expecting something undesirable from overheating the surface... the penalty was 4X run time. After a few more runs I settled on (70% gray, 70 power, 70speed, 600dpi, no-soap), still a remarkable improvement over the the 300 dpi however double the run time but now I don't have to use the soap/rinse/dry routine!

Maybe the type of glass (Libbey Beer Mug) made a difference... it took the 1200dpi very nicely....

[Mark Sipes]

Libbey is the most forgiving. very soft glass. move towards crystal glassware and you will see chipping to the max. Try a Riedel Wine glass. Glass will shatter.

[Dan Hintz]

Maybe the type of glass (Libbey Beer Mug) made a difference... it took the 1200dpi very nicely....

Libbey is the most forgiving. very soft glass. move towards crystal glassware and you will see chipping to the max. Try a Riedel Wine glass. Glass will shatter.

In many cases it can be a crapshoot, but generally too many fractures in the same area lead to entire sections falling away. 1200dpi is a LOT of fractures in a single area, though the 70% black helps mitigate that somewhat.

I just looked at my notes... long ago I settled on 333dpi for images, and 500 dpi for text. The 333dpi provided just the right amount of overlap without fuzzing an image's internal edges (which are rarely straight vertical/horizontal)... the extra resolution on the text gave me the edge definition needed for what amounts to a 1-bit "image" (internal to font edge is on, external to font edge is off).

A lot of my glass work is Riedel... started working with it when people here were claiming leaded glass couldn't be lasered, and what started out as a "sure it can, and I'll show them" turned into a decent money-maker.