Hey everyone! I wanted to know if the glowforge is capable of engraving on solid gold? I have a friend that’s a jeweler & would want to test out some designs. I’m not sure if the reflection would be an issue? Would I have to prep the material a certain way? Any feedback/suggestions/answers are appreciated!
Gold apparently has high reflectance of IR wavelength light. The charts look so good you could probably make a mirror for the laser out of gold. Therefore, I doubt the laser would do anything to gold except bounce off. You may be able to mark it with CerMark. Though I haven’t run across any successful experiments on gold yet.
A 40-45w laser is nowhere near powerful enough to remove any metal of any kind. As @markwal said marking metal with CerMark would be the only hope. I think what that does is deposit an oxide layer on the metal. 24k gold can lay on the ocean floor for centuries and show no signs of tarnishing, so an alloy like 14k that has copper in it I think would be the only option, but I have no idea if it would work at all.
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Copper is reflective of laser beams, and a no-no from what I remember.
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Thanks everyone! I won’t be trying this lol
You can use the laser to put details into wax for investment casting. Not quite as good as direct onto metal, but pretty close.
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