First time going to the GF community for your opinion!

I’m excited to share this with everyone to see what people think. Some of you can even speak from experience of having done similar work. What I plan to do with my GF is make a lot of board game upgrade pieces for myself and others. What I’m posting about today is to see if people prefer the acrylic pieces that have the engraving on the back or the engraving on the front.

In the photo above, do you prefer the one on the Left or Right?
  • Left
  • Right
0 voters

Thanks for the hive mind help in advance everyone!!! I already love working with you all!

7 Likes

JMHO, I prefer engraving acrylic on the back looks cleaner from the front and if you are using them for games pieces that will help from getting stuff in the piece.

I make these for AD and Veterans all engraved from the back. I can also put these in a small stand with LEDs. Looks really good when lit up.

11 Likes

Personally prefer the left for the more consistent color.

I’ve done this - in particular I made credits for Race for the Galaxy. After lots of trial and error and experiments and user testing, the conclusion was that engraved from the back was better.

In fact I engrave as follows:

  1. Focussed engrave for depth
  2. Un-Focussed engrave to smooth out the acrylic, which shows lines very strongly
  3. A score around the engrave to make the edges nice and crisp
3 Likes

I love the idea of making credits for Race (I own Roll) for the Galaxy! I’m not following your explanation though… You run one engrave focused and then do the same engrave again unfocused? You wouldn’t happen to have any pictures of these awesome credits would you?

My first engrave I do at a really low LPI (lines per inch) for speed, but on acrylic it leaves the engrave a bit grainy, both in the cut and on the edges.

So the second engrave is done and I manually set the focus to 12.7mm. The unfocussed laser beam smoothes out the previous engrave.

But, it still leaves it grainy round the edges, so I do a low power score around the engrave to smooth those out.

Have a look at the images here, they are the best photo’s I have: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/658347298

2 Likes