set up help

[Bill George]

Sorry we don't do rocks. If we did it would cost you $10 each, and no quantity discount. ok.... I think you just said "never mind"

Ok its for a Vet, yes we can. Would they fit in a egg carton centered in each hole and if the focus was off a bit or the not centered would it make a big difference?

[Bert Kemp]

Like this USMC Rock (Copy).jpg

[Gary Hair]

Maybe if you contact Ikonics or professionalmask they could donate some to you - never hurts to ask!

[Steven Cox]

Hi Burt, I used to engrave small rocks like those on the spot at some festivals. I made an insert out or a flat piece of thin metal sheet (white colorbond) than I placed on the main table in the laser. I then had a paper template that I created on CorelDraw & printed it out on an A4 sheet of paper (see attached Corel file). The "template" is just a series of oval shapes. I held down the A4 template on the metal sheet with some magnets then positioned the rocks that I wanted to engrave over each of the ovals just visualising where they would sit and then held the rocks in place with some more small magnets. With this particular template I could engrave 9 rocks at a time but you could easily fit more than that.

On my Insert metal sheet I also glued some guides to it giving me a top-left guides to align the sheet of paper to. This insert was very useful for all sorts of templates that I regularily used.

Hope this helps Steve.



StonesTemplateCv9.cdr

[Bert Kemp]

yep think I just start building the bridge lotta good ideas coming tho

Bert.. this reminds me of a story from WWII where the General called the Engineer Captain into a staff meeting. The General asked the Captain how long it would take to draft up a plan to build a bridge to cross a major river in support of his Advance. The captain called the General the next day and told him the bridge was in place, the plans will require 2 more days to prepare!!

[David Somers]

Bert,


One way to do this would be to get some silly putty and some thick card stock or a hunk of plywood. Doesnt have to be thick. Silly putty the rocks on the card stock in the oriention you want them. Scan them and bring into Corel. Place your text/graphics on each rock. Take the cardstock out to the laser, lay in the laser, your cardstock will keep them aligned. Burn em. Go do it with another batch. Your lettering can then be burned onto each rock and placed for the best use of that rocks space.

A second option would be to lay a line of masking tape across your table. Lay more tape down perpendicular to the horizontal line of tape. Do it by measurement so you can use those measurements in your corel software. Lay out your text or graphics in Corel centered on each cross point for the tape. Then on the laser lay your rocks down at the crosspoints lined up to present the best surface for the engraving. Burn em. Remove them, lay out the next batch, burn em. etc.

The second method will be fastest. The first method involves a bit more but gives you more control over the text placement on each rock.

And Mr Bert!!! A delightful and extremely happy Christmas to you!!!! And to rest of you folks as well!!! Merry Christmas everyone!!!


Dave

[Bert Kemp]

Hey Dave that first Idea is what I'm working on because I can place the text better.

[Scott Shepherd]

Bert, try modeling clay. I use it all the time. You can push the items down into the clay and you'll be set. I put clay in a ziplock plastic bag. That way it doesn't leave a clay residue on the items I'm engraving. I've done a lot of items by just pushing them down into the clay. It works really well. If you wanted to, you could cut some squares out of a piece, say every 3 inches, then put clay in the bottom. Use the square cut outs for placement and eye balling, then use the clay for leveling and holding tight.

[Scott Marquez]

If you have a honeycomb table, place a sheet of plywood on it.
In your design program, set up your columns and rows with the text that will all be the same, using your judgement as to how much space to leave between each one, then place some sample text as a placeholder for the text that will be custom.
Send it to the laser and burn the image on the board, now you can go back and edit the custom part and send it to the laser to be engraved on your stones. Use your pattern that you burned on the board to align the rocks, using the clay to hold the rocks flat.
Scott

[David Somers]

Kev! Apologies. Didnt see your tape idea earlier in the thread! Didnt mean to repeat your thought in my post!!! Great minds think alike! <grin>

Dave

[Jeffrey Dewing]

I have used sand. I made a tub or used a cookie sheet. Put sand in it and used a stick to make lines in the sand. This made a grid with 4 inch marks I could use as center marks for my objects. Then I used the same stick to level my objects, ( being different thicknesses,) and used wood shakes to level the corners of my cookie sheet into focus with my laser head. I was lasering glass madalions with cermark glass and ceramic paint. It turned out to be a fast easy way to pump out 100 of these animal vector outlines on glass for a client of mine. I found it easy to work with and clean up was a breeze.

[Jeffrey Dewing]

I use a cookie sheet with sand. Use a ruler to mark off sections 2", 4", what ever you need and place rock in the centers. I use the same ruler to make sure they are all the same, and level to my focus tool with shims under corners of my cookie sheet! I was doing animal figures on glass medallions. Worked like a charm for me...

[Bryan Spiegel]

Bert, try modeling clay. I use it all the time. You can push the items down into the clay and you'll be set. I put clay in a ziplock plastic bag. That way it doesn't leave a clay residue on the items I'm engraving. I've done a lot of items by just pushing them down into the clay. It works really well. If you wanted to, you could cut some squares out of a piece, say every 3 inches, then put clay in the bottom. Use the square cut outs for placement and eye balling, then use the clay for leveling and holding tight.

Silicone safe modeling clay (used for making silicone molds) does not dry out very quickly.

[Bert Kemp]

Thanks everyone for all the Ideas. What I ended up doing after trying a few of the suggested methods was to lay out 25 rocks at a time ( remember I said they are pretty flat so they didn't need a lot of cushion) on my scanner bed and scan the shape. took the scan into corel saved as a dxf and loaded into laser and did a very fast engrave on a thin piece of Plywood, yes it still took a while but it was a very light engrave at fast speed. I then put my text into the corel shapes, place the rock on the plywood in the right shape for the rock lowered the table to focus for the rocks and engraved it worked pretty good Took some time but I have time .