Couple coasters and a card

Just trying out some of the materials that are starting to arrive, mostly from seeing other people on the forum mention them and having to get some for myself.

These aluminum “business card” blanks work really well… I have to try again at lower power, since the black is sensitive to laserons and blows out a bit. I couldn’t think of anything to put on them but I was eager to test with something.

Then I did me some coasters, in slate:

and sandstone:

A couple of notes:

  1. The cheap slate coasters are crumbly. I might try a deluxe model next time.
  2. The sandstone one looks better in the photo than in real life. It’s a bit low-contrast in white. I did some power level experiments and I discovered that you can turn it way up and char the stuff. Not sure that’s an improvement, and in any case I didn’t take photos before sticking the cork bottom over it. It’s still an interesting effect.
  3. Others have said this but I repeat it here: on some materials the visible light emitted by the pew-pew action is really bright. The sandstone in particular was producing a flash that I should not have looked at as much as I did. I still have a headache.
  4. You might notice an artwork glitch with the sandstone coaster. Glowforge still does some weird things with SVGs especially when there’s overlapping strokes. I’m going to make a tutorial on how I fixed it.
  5. Finally, here’s a bonus video of the slate being engraved:
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What molecule is that? Chemistry wasn’t my strong subject.

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Digging the anodized B cards. I have some slate coasters I can’t wait to try so seeing yours fills me with anticipation!

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Yep it is caffeine… I have too many geeky t-shirts with that plastered on them and my own laser accessories in the works too. :slight_smile:

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Nice demo of various materials. Good pics. And if you really want to see some sparks, engrave or cut Corian.

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Fun tests! I’ve done my aluminum at 1000/100/340. I do mask it though even though it’s probably not necessary. Maybe give masking a shot and see if that helps your issue.

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After you’ve run through your Amazon anodized blanks, head over to The Ring Lord’s site and check out his stuff. Lots cheaper. The dogtags have a quarter inch variation in length but it’s easy to find the short ones vs the long ones in a stack if it’s critical they’re exactly the same size.

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