Engraving on opaque acrylic for healthcare workers

[oceanwoodcreation]

Hi! I got matched up with a hospital to make a whole bunch of ear savers. They wanted their name engraved on them, but all I have is the white opaque acrylic, since that’s all the GF store had left.
You can’t really see anything that’s engraved on it. Do any of you brilliant people know of a way to get the engraving to show? Sharpie didn’t work

[cynd11]

Here’s an example of using spray paint to fill acrylic engraving:

Octopus in acrylic

Watched “Making Contact” on the Nature channel yesterday and was inspired by the incredibly beautiful octopus. (Totally worth a watch!) Had some scrap acrylic and spray paint laying around and I ended up working on these til the wee morning. I really adore the look of painted acrylic. The tentacles, boat and waves were black and white images I found online and I didn’t draw them; I just heavily reworked them into a file and put them together. The brightly colored octopus and wa…

Whooops, I just read through it and it turns out this was done on clear acrylic by spraying the back. But I still think you could use spray paint on the front as long as you do it before removing the masking.

[eflyguy]

If they are full sheets, you can engrave first, then take them out and spray over the engraved areas and then put the sheet back in to complete the cut operation.

[oceanwoodcreation]

Brilliant. I don’t have any spray paint, but I do have a bunch of acrylic paint… I’ll try brushing that on before weeding and see what happens

[eflyguy]

You might make the engrave deeper, and the font bold, to make it work well.

[oceanwoodcreation]

How do you make the engrave deeper? I just use proofgrade settings because it all still confuses me.

[eflyguy]

Sorry, if you’re not already comfortable with changing settings, it’s probably best to stick to what you know works for a project like this.

Later you can learn more about it in the tutorial provided here. “In general”, you can increase engrave depth with more power and/or lower speed - but it takes a little experimentation to find what works for you.

[daleb100]

Engraving is very subtle on all the opaque colors. I think it looks pretty cool and my guess is they would appreciate it as is. Just a thought

[kittski]

@cynd11

Whooops, I just read through it and it turns out this was done on clear acrylic by spraying the back. But I still think you could use spray paint on the front as long as you do it before removing the masking.

Actually, you’re still kinda correct! I spray painted the back of clear acrylic and then applied masking over the painted side. I engraved through the paint into the acrylic, filled in the engraving with more paint and then repeated the process several more times.

[chris1]

I’m honestly still worried about engravings making them harder to clean.