I have some hard plastic bottles that are clear, and I want to engrave on them using my Diode laser. I have a smoke and fume extractor and am very aware from this forum of the potential poisons fumes.
I note that the diode laser does not work well on clear plastic and even the supplier says that I must make the material black.
So my first question is how do i do this, i thought of a painter’s tape but the glue on the tape causes a problem, So was wondering if there is a material or pain that is used. Also, I don’t want the engraving to be colored from the material if possible.
Once I have resolved the blackening issue, what speeds and number of passes are needed to be set. I have the Sculpfun 9 diode laser.
You usually paint the material black. Check YouTube, you will find hundreds of examples. Some people use acrylic colors, water colors, sharpie markers, spray paint… maybe just test with some colors you have at home. If this doesn’t work well, buy some of the recommended colors mentioned in the videos.
If you want to engrave something that doesn’t stop your lasers frequency, you have to use an indirect method…
In simple terms it means you heat up something adjacent to what you want to mark and the heat (damage) is transferred to the object.
Most of the dark paints, tempera, black markers work by heating up and that heat damages (marks) the object.
You can put something on it, or you can shoot through it to a dark material underneath and that heat will make the damage on the other side.
The drawback can be that the material gets mixed with the coating used and your engraving has residue of the coating mixed with the melted plastic … you might have to try different coating types to see if it works in your application.
The shoot through it will probably be a problem for you since you probably can’t get it focused through the bottle… And most bottles are not really clear enough for a laser to function properly… But you would have to give it a try.
As @misken noted, there is an ocean of videos out there on engraving plastics…
Always be aware of what you are lasing and what by products you make when it vaporized or melted… just a good ventilation system is not enough… Especially if you exhaust can get to one of your neighbors.
Some of these gases produced can be bad for your equipment… Here’s a $30K laser that has literally been wasted cutting vinyl… it is corroded throughout the machine and out through the air ventilation system.
Although this is on vinyl, you have to know what you have… it’s everywhere… along with many other toxic chemicals.
If it isn’t a pvc variant, what is it?
Here’s a sheet I’ve had in my documents for quite a while… it give a good idea about some plastics and yours might be among them. Take if for what it’s worth… always good to hear it all and then you can sort out what you want to do.
It’s a pdf, so you need to rename it, removing the .txt extension…
