Acrylic inlay

Made on a Glowforge
21

Very nice, I struggle with getting the inlays right - that is impressive

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22

Super rad! I think I just heard a “level up” chime in the distance.

4 Likes
23

This looks too cool - my kiddos have little acrylic light up thingies like that and i haven’t even tried to make custom designs for them :sob: !

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24

Thanks!

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Here’s the design if you want to give it a go… you’ll need to do the kerf adjust for the cutout pieces, I would say maybe start with .009 although for me, it was all over the place, which is why I took those out of this file.

compass_lb1

Forgot to add, the blue circle is a score. Everything else is cut.

6 Likes
26

that’s so kind of you! thanks so much :blush:

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27

Hey There! I’d love to get some help here. I’m super inexperienced and maybe I don’t even know what an “inlay” truly is…I recently tried a license tag and subtracted the image I was going to inlay. The pieces fit right in but gluing it was a beast! I used Mod Podge and it ruined the finish on the acrylic. What is the true process to do it? Thanks in advance for your help!

28

Inlays can be thinner material than the main project which requires engraving a space into which you insert the inlay, or it can be two materials that are the same thickness and the inlay simply fits into the other material. Proper inlays require an understanding of kerf which is the amount of material the laser destroys when it makes a cut. It also requires an understanding of how a laser cut is not perpendicular, but is actually slanted. Some inlays involve flipping the interior piece so that the slanted edges fit more snugly in the cut out area. In short, inlays are more than cutting out a piece and gluing it into another.

There are lots of posts in the forum regarding inlays and kerf. Here is a place to start: Search results for 'inlay' - Glowforge Owners Forum

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29

Thanks so much for the insight! This is all very new to me! I’ll continue my research starting with your post! Thanks!!!

30

Also for acrylic, you’d want to use something else to glue it. For acrylic, I use weld-on 4 to bond pieces together. But it’s got a learning curve. E6000 is easier to clean up, I use that too.