Etching Tile

Been doing quite a few tiles lately. I found coloring in and around only the etched portion makes it easier to clean. Leave it on for at least 30-40 mins (that was the hardest part for me…lol) Use a dry magic eraser, no water, and rub it with a little pressure. It will squeak and sound like nails on a chalkboard if you do it right…lol.
I keep all the color, except for black turns more dark grey. I have a dark navy blue marker that I put on after and that deepens the black a bit.

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Ok I’ll be honest and say I haven’t tried it yet, but…

I have a technique that I made a video on for CNC v carve painting. It works on the basis that mineral spirits removes oil based paint from shellac but doesn’t affect the shellac. Works great for quick painting even shallow engravings. I have to believe that oil based paint and mineral spirits will work great here. Spray paint is usually oil based, but I use the rustolium oil based paint in a can (brush on). I’ll have to try it out,but here’s the video.

Also, have you guys tried premasking the tile, engraving, then spray paint, then removing the masking?

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I had some engraved tile the the sharpie was dried out and thus made only a mess and coming back with a better marker did not improve things.

However a couple days in a puddle of bleach and it was back to the start so the good marker worked.

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With any spray sealer, you need to start with just a fine light coat, wait til it dries and add another light coat. It will help it not run.

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I did and it worked well. Just can’t wait too long before removing masking or it will lift the paint out of the engrave. It is kind of a pain to work with in small details

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For anyone using standard white tile and using the dots method, Where are you setting the dot density at?

How many lines per inch?

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I haven’t seen much advantage to upping the DPI past 225.

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You mean the LPI?

I vary it based on the artwork. for of the submarine tiles I was doing I had a PDF of a “Welcome” pamphlet they printed on board and gave to new sailors. It had a picture of (amongst) other things George Washington Carver so I played with the dot density (both min & max) to get enough contrast due to depth of engrave into the tile that Carver wasn’t just a blob. I think it was 20/70.

And 225 LPI.

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Wow! First go was from settings up high on the topic. Not bad at all!

600 speed
Full power
75 dots
450 lines.

Next I’m trying 70 dots and 225 lines

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These pictures don’t do it justice. In person they look way better

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What do you mean by 70 dots or 75 dots? I don’t see that as a GF option for engraving

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The slider. Has numbers

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Oh ok. I never noticed that before because the hand pointer covers up where the numbers display. I thought maybe you were eyeballing it, which you can do pretty easily for 75, but not for 70 lol

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I know. I hate that.lol I reported that but not sure anyone listened

@vee is there any way you guys can fix that? The number should be displayed above the slider, not below where the mouse cursor covers it up.

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And these were colored in with a marker? Looks great. In person, do you prefer how the 70 dot or 75 dot density looks?

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Not sure because I did a huge jump in lines per inch

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Would you happen to have the “thing number” of the hinged 3D printed stand? I happen to have 3 3D printers sitting here with nothing to do at the moment.

It’s pretty sensitive to bad calibration. I was batching out several of them and didn’t realize that my build plate drifted a little, so I made 4 of them that are trash. You could probably fix the tolerance a little to make it less sensitive. But when you’re properly calibrated, it works great.

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Oh no! another Rabbit hole to do that on the Glowforge!

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