Can glowforge work on marble?

I am wondering how the glowforge works on marble. Does anyone have experience with this?

A quick search in the glowforge forum can yield some excellent information around your question. Here’s a hit that will get you started.

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There are a wide variety of materials that are laser compatible, including many (but not all) woods, plastics, leathers, and papers. Like a microwave, though, you have to be careful what you put inside. Using the wrong materials can cause damage to your Glowforge or harm to you or others. You can read about materials safety in our manual at glowforge.com/manual.

To make it simple, we created the Proofgrade line of laser-compatible materials. They’re extensively tested for safety and print beautifully every time. You can see them here: https://glowforge.com/materials

If you’d like to print on materials from another source, you can use any material you like as long as it’s compatible with a CO2 laser. Unfortunately, we can’t offer specific advice on particular materials provided by other vendors. You can contact the manufacturer or consult an expert to determine if a material is compatible with the CO2 laser inside the Glowforge unit.

Our community is also full of information about materials and settings. You can search for the material you want to learn about here:
https://community.glowforge.com/search?expanded=true
Note that advice provided by other Glowforge users is unsupported and is not reviewed for accuracy by Glowforge.


I’ve had some good luck with marble. If using a light marble, make sure to mask it and paint it, otherwise it may be hard to see the design, unless subtlety is what you are going for.

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Yes. It works quite well.

Use that search icon. You will be amazed at what’s been done. :wink:

This is a 12"x12" tile, about 3/16" thick

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Where did you find black marble with that much solid vs the typical white veining that seems to be prevalent at the big box stores?

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In truth, I hand-selected that piece to have as little as possible, just so the picture would turn out that well. But the place I ordered the tile from is this:

I honestly can’t recall if I ordered the Negro Oriental Absolute, or the Negro Marquina. I ordered some samples first (4"x4") of those two and two black granite styles. The granite engraves well–but you cannot get as much detail as on marble, due to the aggregate nature of granite.

Spoiler alert–they are not nearly as cheap as ceramic you would get at Home Depot or Lowe’s.

Thanks. I’ve got a couple on order - both the Marquina and the Absolute. The Oriental Absolute looks almost vein free (but interestingly does not show up if you click the “slight variation” filter.

I’ve tried granite for photos but have very erratic results because the composite nature of granite makes it fairly homogenous in pattern to the eye but not to the laser and thus the engrave exposes layers/components that are “out of place” compared to the layer that’s not engraved.

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