I have a friend who is asking me to engrave on these https://www.etsy.com/listing/640975557/tree-metal-blank-brass-225-24g-christmas?ref=shop_home_active_7
Now I know it won’t engrave but is it safe to use Cermark? We have never ventured past wood… My husband is worried the laser will reflect off the metal and start the house on fire…
Couple of folks have worked with it:
I haven’t done brass yet, but I have done a ton of Aluminum. Rather than try to do it all on the Glowforge, I use the laser to remove an acid resist from the material, I then use an acid (Ferric Chloride works on brass I believe.) to etch the areas where the resist was removed by the laser. With experimentation, you can get very good results with the laser.
You can get better results if you use a photosensitive resist, and a film positive (like a transparency only more opaque and higher resolution.) This process also requires a UV light source to do the exposure. It’s not an expensive process, but you can’t get photo positives done at staples. I used to get them from a local printer, but it’s almost all digital to plate nowadays. I got some done here. https://www.anthemprintingsf.com/Film-Output-Services-s/232.htm
