Hello all, I am new here and in the laser community and I am seeking for some help.
I want to “remove the coating” or engrave on an acrylic material that has a mirrored coating.
The problem is that the coating in mirroring both sides.
You can see there, what I want to is remove that coating so that light passes through. I tried using a black permanent marker to avoid reflecting the laser beam when engraving but I am not sure that this is a good idea and I don’t want to keep gambling damaging the laser diode or myself.
The coating is very thin, even when I turned on the laser for focusing (3%), it did a scratch on it.
How should I approach this? Is this fine with low power or maybe multiple fast speed passes? Can I just use black marker? Or do I maybe need some kind of tape to put over it so it doesn’t reflect? If so, what kind of tape?
Thanks a lot in advance for your time and happy xmas!
P.D. I have a Laser Master 2PRO S2 with the LU2-10A
I thought about the reflected beam as well, I slide the edge of an annodised metal business card under the front edge of any mirrored material I use, so far it has not had any impact on jobs I have done, but also can’t say if not doing it would have caused a problem, I figure better safe than sorry. Make sure you place whatever you use as a shim is at the front so any reflection is away from you not toward you.
I have a wooden table below the machine and I put the acrylic mirror material on top. That wooden material is not reflective and shouldn’t burn easily. But I am still worried that when the laser hits the mirrored coating if the acrylic, it will reflect and damage itself. You are saying I should get an annodised metal table on top of this wooden table, and put the acrylic above it? Or is it enough with my wooden table. Thanks again for the help.
No, what I am saying is something small like a business card to put under the mirrored material to give it a very slight angle so beam is not reflected straight back up.
