Etching Tile

This is lovely! What a great combination of materials.

Totally agree. It looks great! :grin:

The box looks great! Really like the dividers and hinge.

Bit of a cautionary tale here:

I found an image of a whole bunch of studio ghibli characters I wanted to etch across three tiles so that we could have a coaster set that fit together to form a big picture.

Unfortunately, the image was very sketchy, with lots of pencil shading, and the conversion process didn’t quite translate well. It looked a lot better than I thought it would coming out of the glowforge, but the dots just kind of look bad to me.

Ah, well, I have plenty of crisper ghibli-themed pictures I can etch instead.

10 Likes

Use the vary power setting next time? It may not work; the trick with this process is that it’s sort of all or nothing I think – shading by power variance may not work at all. You either use enough power to get through the glazing to the markable ceramic or you don’t. I personally think the dithering doesn’t look great in most cases, though I did once forget to select vary power (on wood) and actually liked the result.

Anyway, it might be worth a shot to see what result you get with vary power. If you try it, post pics! :slight_smile:

2 Likes

i think it would look a lot better if you were to clean up the white areas to be pure white so those didn’t get etched with dots that make those areas look dirty. i don’t think it looks bad where it’s etching a “gray,” but it’s all the random dots in the white areas that don’t look as good.

2 Likes

My experience is that using Vary Power over dithering works far better for jpg type images like photographs on images with shading. For line drawings I just use a constant her setting.

1 Like

Moved from Sharpies to inexpensive acrylic craft paint. Now just need patience and finesse to up my game. :sunglasses:

33 Likes

Beautiful tree! :grinning:

1 Like

Our library’s “IdeaLab” has a Glowforge Pro just sitting and waiting for the companion filter to arrive before putting it into commission. But I fill up their display area with stuff I put together from sources here, there, and everywhere. :sunglasses::glowforge:

2 Likes

Cut a vent. Forget that filter! :slight_smile:

2 Likes

They spent a bundle putting together the space in the library … don’t think they want to resort to ‘trudging’ down the hall and into some shipping & receiving space 'cause it has a window to vent out of. I fear the consumable cost of the filter unit will get old very soon.

No way to cut a dryer vent where it’s set up?

I wonder if you even need to vent for tile work? (You don’t for working on slate, stone and glass… those don’t burn.)

I’m not sure about the glaze on tiles, but it might be okay too. Might be something to test on the one you’ve got running.

2 Likes

It occupies a space in the middle of the library … http://www.erielibrary.org/idealab/ :frowning_face:

Wow this is beautiful. I would’ve never thought that wiping the excess sharpie off would leave the areas that soaked into the ceramic base in tact!

Yes, there’s no smoke and no aftersmell. I think it would be just fine to do this with no filter or venting.

1 Like

Trust me, they’ll want to move it once they hear how loud it is…

2 Likes

Some of my ‘beginners’ stuff I took in. They have a great space and we’ll received by the community.

13 Likes

Jules, yes you do need to vent or filter for glass, stone, slate, ceramic. I’m a glass artist and when I work with glass powders, I wear a particulate mask. Breathing in fine dust from all of the above can lead to silicosis. Please, please, please vent or filter!

8 Likes