Omni X crystal engraving inside a sphere?

LightBurn Hardware Compatibility Commarker
1

Hi Everyone,
this is not directly Lightburn related but I thought I would poke the community with a question:
I recently added a Commarker Omni X to my other lasers as I wanted to play with crystal internal engravings, and I can see on their webpage some pictures of those, including spheres:

Screenshot 2025-10-12 091110
Screenshot 2025-10-12 091110650×566 61.6 KB

I made a few engravings inside square blocks and they turn out lovely, but trying on a sphere I get no results. I do believe there is some calculations going on to account for the refraction of the laser beam when it transition from air to glass, and I believe those calculations should be VERY different if the laser hits a planar face or a spherical surface, but nowhere in their software I can find a settings for that… I sent an email to commarker support and so far no answer… I tend to believe that inside engraving in a sphere is not possible with this machine, then why do they put those images on their website? plain marketing deceivement? or is there something I do not understand?

Thank you for your time reading this

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Have you tried using the specific 3D function in ComMarer Studio?

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Yes,
that is what I am using…

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Have a look at keyso’s video; they use an “adapter” of the same type of glass and a little water to create a planar face

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Is this a trick question?

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looks very clever :zany_face:

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Hi! I’m on the same boat. I specifically bought this machine for doing 3d engraving on spheres.
This is BS.

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In their defense: they didn’t tell you how it’s done. The technique in the video above should work, but I get what you mean!

Your supplier of the glass spheres might be familiar with these physics limitation and have the other half of the sphere available?

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Turning the machine upside down and getting a custom made optical glass mold doesn’t sound like something the machine can do, it’s just a hack

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I am working on something that maybe will work… Commarker also need to fix the software as currently it is NOT possible to save your settings after you engraved a crystal. There is a SAVE button, but clicking on it just saves off a copy of the original STL file :distorted_face: .

Commarker support only say that they are ‘working on it’. This makes me wonder about all the ‘honest reviews’ I saw on youtube before buying the machine, and not a single one mentioned this problem

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It doesn’t surprise me. When there is money (gifts) involved it is not a neutral review.

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Yes, you’d have to turn the crystal and the mold upside down instead.

The mold would need to be a perfect fit, and come from the same supplier that makes the ball. That might be hard to source.

I’d be interested to see what that might be.
Calculating the diffraction in software sounds like a massive development effort, including the phisical limitations.

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There’s this song about money.. The album cover is extremely on topic! :wink:

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keep us posted. I’m seeing some videos with “engraving oil-” on a container and it does work, But it doesn’t say which kind of oil or where to get it

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I think Mineral Oil has a diffraction similar to glass.

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That is what I am trying, so far the best media is glicerine, but still not good enough.

There are commercial matching refraction liquids, but they cost far too much to be used for this.

After complaining with commarker, they have made some experiments and they are sending me a bottle of the compound thay came up with… will see when it arrives.

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Please keep us posted about the results!

We’ll soon have an Omni X in the fleet to run some tests on our side.

Doing Bubblegrams, subsurface engraving is definitely one of the things we’d like to try!

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i would LOVE to be able to use lightburn for that!

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Any updates to this? Curious of the bubblegrams in general and if can be done using lightburn with a focus adjustment.

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We have a few ideas on how this can be implemented! However, we need more control over the laser for this:

  • Full control over the Z-axis.
  • Access to the autofocus system

Once we can control these two things, bubblegrams won’t be too far away.

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