After @karaelena’s demo of marble, I got a piece of corian out. This is a 4x4" piece .47" thick. I did a small test of an initial in the lower right corner, stopped it and just did the whole thing.
Did a combination of trace and engrave to try and highlight the ducking in and out of the knot work. I’m pretty happy with it.
5%, 335 in/min at 340 lpi. I have a whole box of these pieces in many different colors.
One thing to note about the scoring. Compared to the etching it was a bit more dramatic with the flashes and sparks. I did the score at 40% power at 196 in/min. It was throwing up sparks vertically above the material toward the head, something I hadn’t noticed before. The etching had very minimal flashing and sparks.
Will have to work on the photos of this. Hard to get any contrast with my lighting setup (I finally made a light box but still need a little more light, Perhaps a flexible LED panel.)
Check your local countertop and cabinet makers. They will usually have scraps of corian, granite, marble, etc. and may be willing to let loose of them for minimal cost. I think Corian is a trade name and thus available only through dealers, unlike other materials which are available through regular retail channels.
Corian is a process that is out of patent. But worth it because Dupont puts so much work into color matching. If you know your color you could take 2 sheets and follow the right process and have a seamless mating as long as you don’t have staining or bleaching.
As far as Corian goes I seem to recall it’s a mixture of bauxite and an epoxy to hold it all together. Should be able to laser out a section then use something like a patch kit to fill in with a contrast color before weeding to get some nice effects and if it bleeds you have to sand and polish the infill anyway.
There are a bunch of “solid surface” countertop materials, of which Corian is one. (We got something different for our counters 15 years ago because they had the color we liked and corian didn’t, iirc). And every radiused corner, sink/faucet cutout etc is a useless offcut that the contractors will generally be happy not to have to dispose of. A lot of the varieties have chips of different colors mixed in, but to a carbide bit it all acts the same.
(There’s a small chance you could crack a piece of corian by applying enough heat to a small spot, so be aware.)
Most kitchen shops will provide free 3"x3" samples - I can see lots of puzzled kitchen shops wondering why everyone is coming in for samples all the time…
You said “puzzled”… could you imagine Corian coasters cut into puzzle pieces that interlock together? You could get all different color materials and make interesting patterns, or even turn drink coasters into platforms for hot pans and dishes so they dont scorch other surfaces. Hmm… may be too thick to cut through on a GF but etching could still be interesting.
I found a half full sample kit of 3" square tiles of another manufacturer’s solid surface material at a local Goodwill-type store a year ago. Those are in my ever growing raw materials pile.
@marmak3261, so glad you were able to test this out! Looks awesome! I too have to find a supplier now. In grad school I asked a local place that cut out sink holes in Corian countertops…have to see if I can grab some more of those!
You just made my day! And I love the design, too. Though now I suppose the next test would be to see if the Corian can be cut all the way through…I bet with the flip-alignment cutting through 1/4" pieces may not be too bad. Fingers crossed!
I did a cut with 80% power and 20 in/minute. It threw up the sparks way too much for my comfort and hardly made a dent deeper than the raster. This was on .46" Corian. Maybe multiple cuts eventually. My guess is not efficiently will try a few approaches though. The Sawmill Creek folks discuss cutting 1/4 Corian with an 80 watt or higher laser. You can use a regular table saw to cut smaller shapes and a hole saw to do circles like for round coasters.
Aw, bummer! Thanks a bunch for the info though! The sparking was my biggest worry…the Corian I was able to cut through was on a 60 watt with a pretty strong exhaust system, so I always thought there was the possibly that it wouldn’t be possible with the glowforge. Perhaps a desktop CNC router is in my future…haha
Yeah, Corian is supposed to cut pretty good on a CNC router. I bought a piece recently to experiment with on my router but then got tied up in too many other projects.
It cuts like a dream on routers!! Although the sound isn’t terribly fun to listen to lol. The first time I ever used Corian was when a fabrications course I took in school introduced us to the big Onsrud router we had in the shop…that was such a cool project.
Edit: Oh hey, random thought…think a Dremel would be able to handle Corian?
