Engraving cutlery

While waiting for December home delivery of Glowforge pro, I am dreaming up Christmas projects and presents. How about a handsome set of personalized and engraved knives, forks, spoons? Thus, the question. Can Glowforge engrave such metal utensils?

For the blades you’ll need to use something like Cermark, which is a spray that lets the laser engrave on some metals. But I would focus on the handles - you could do some gorgeous custom hardwood handles!

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Hi Dan,

How is the laser at achieving a gradual relief edge, such as a chamfer or fillet from a top angle? I have solidworks software; could I input a model into the program to achieve such a result?

I’m not quite sure I understand - are you asking how the laser can follow an existing edge, or create one by engraving? If the former, then the autofocus takes care of it for you. If the latter, you would provide a greyscale bitmap where darker pixels mean more power. Note that material removal is nonlinear with power so some fussing is required. Of course, with software we can fix that… definitely something we’re interested in adding.

Chamfering and rounding is something I’m particularly interested in, because that’s very hard to do by hand.

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Me too. Did some early experiments on acrylic that convinced me it’s very possible if the medium is homogenous, like acrylic or delrin and unlike hardwoods or plywood. But the process would benefit greatly from us writing a lot of software.

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Hi Dan,

First of all, thanks so much for the quick response, your attentiveness really is a confidence builder in this project! Maybe a better way to state my question is this; if the laser can engrave, and the maximum depth is .25", can the strength of the laser vary to create cutting depths between these dimensions? Could it, for instance, cut into a material .125" if you desire? If this is possible I think a chamfer or fillet may be realistic?

Thanks!

Alice

@alicedebodesigns here is another thread showing that not only can you do what you want with a simple chamfer/bevel, but there are far more complex 3D surfaces possible!

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