Glass engraving help

Anyone know next steps I can take to fine tune this?!? The “S” and “O” on SoDak got distorted(maybe too close to edge of bottle when engraving???) and the bottom area did not engrave well at all. Most of lettering is missing🤷‍♂️ I believe the setting was 850 speed 95% power 340 LPI 1 pass. Would making multiple passes help? Thanks!!!


2 Likes

Welcome to the forum.
You have more than one issue going on here. The first is determining the best settings for the glass that you are engraving. The second is getting the focus correct on your material. The curvature of the bottle means that some areas of the material are closer to the laser than other areas. You will probably not get a good focus on this item since there is so much difference in the height of the item being engraved.

You can try a few things - like engraving in section. Use the set focus tool and focus on the lower part of the bottle. Engrave that section. Set focus again on the middle logo area and engrave that. Finally you are going to have to figure something out for the top graphic, and since this currently spans the entire curved area of the bottle there will be parts that are out of focus. It is possible to do a defocused engrave that reduces this difference, but it might be a challenge.

5 Likes

okay, obvious newbie here, how can you split it into sections like that? I had that logo engraved as one step, so there weren’t multiple steps as you are saying. Is this something that can be done in Inkscape? or illustrator?

Test, test, and test again.

No two “glass” items are the same. You have to sacrifice material to come up with settings that work for the items you have.

It applies to virtually any material.

I’ve engraved shot glasses, spice jars, and many other items. None had the same settings for ideal results. Specifically, if you use too much power, it tends to fracture and produce “fuzzy” results.

this might be easier to cut a mask on the laser and them chemical etch.

2 Likes

Did you have soap or anything on the glass? Many folks have commented here about that helping get cleaner engraves.

As for splitting - yes you’d do it in Inkscape. Make 3 copies of your design in the same file - delete the 2/3rds you don’t want from each leaving 3 sections that are all exactly the same width, then make each section a different colour. When you upload you’ll turn the 2 you’re not doing to Ignore, then run the first, then rotate the bottle exactly the width of the piece, then run the 2nd, then rotate, and run the 3rd. The rotating will be the most exacting part!

Luckily you now have this “bad” bottle to practice on!