Hi brains,
I’m new-ish to laser etching and am trying to etch onto marble coasters.
Setting is 500mm/m at 100% power but when I remove the matte paper, the coaster barely has a scratch.
By the looks of it, the laser is not registering the marble as matter, and I can see the laser through the underside of the coaster.
Is there a recommended method or specific matte paper I can use that will result in better quality?
This indicates the marble is somewhat transparent to visible light.
Try using the NTM method like they use on bath tiles. You will see this is a very popular subject. This thread alone has 416 postings…
Let us know how it comes out. For stuff I cannot directly engrave, I use acrylic paint or the stunningly expensive Cermark spray.
That’s brilliant, I’ll give it a go. Thanks!
That’s right – Brilliant along with LBT100 and Cermark for marking metals and glass…
LBT100 on 6" square porcelain tile using my fiber…
Good luck
Not metal, not glass, not porcelain. Marble is a rock, right?
Yes, if it shines through you have to use an indirect method to engrave.
Something that will get excited (hot) from the laser and that heat will shatter the rock… That’s the best engraving you’re going to get with a stone that the laser will pass through. This works, but indirect is never the best method … if you can pick.
If I recall, none of the rocks in the link will allow visible light to pass through them.
I’ve used my fiber to try an engraving on floor slate. It is 2’x3’ in size. It’s pretty hard and after I lased it, it shattered and broke into pieces…
That is surprising. I don’t think slate has a crystalline structure that would make it susceptible to heat stresses. I did fracture a shot glass with my diode laser.
Did you run a test on another section of that tile to see if it fractured again? Maybe you could add this discovery to the Fried some rocks! thread.
This was flooring slate, I got a couple of pieces from Home Depot. They’re pretty hard. I lased the design, shut the fiber down and went to dinner. Seemed like 10 minutes I hear a loud pop and it was broken… Haven’t spent any time since then messing with it, the engraving was difficult to see.
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