Glowforge Metalworking Capabilities

@dan Dan, thanks for taking the time to respond. That went a long way. Can’t wait to get my Glowforge!

1 Like

@steve: you bet
@joe: remind me monday and I’ll see if I can bang one out for you
@Mike_C: good idea!
@septimus39: no prob

1 Like

@dan Just wanted to remind you about the engraved rock (I couldn’t find a rock emoji, so here is the moon instead :moon: )!

2 Likes

@joe Inspired by your emoji I could not pass up the opportunity to point out this classic example of laser engraving of rock… specifically the moon. :wink:

8 Likes

If memories serves, I believe that’s from The Tick! Awesome! Spooooooooooon!

4 Likes

@joe You got it! I was hoping folks might get the reference. :smiley:

1 Like

I just wrote up my experience with dry moly lube as a substitute for Cermark. I’ll have to try to dig up some pictures, but here is the post explaining a bit of my process.

3 Likes

thanks for posting your writeup! I’ve been very curious about the MolyD approach. One question: what was the color of the marking after cleanup?

1 Like

@jbv, I thought about including it, but then when I hit reply and shutdown my computer I realized I had forgot! The product I used was black (more like charcoal…dark grey/gray :smile: ). It’s flat black when applied, and if I remember right, turns a little more deeper black when “baked” on. After thinking about this more, and how some might tackle etching glass, I’m thinking if I were to do this again, I would apply a mask to the metal, cut out on the laser the area I would want marked, take it out of the laser and remove the mask where I want to apply the dry moly, spray on the dry moly, let it dry, pull off the rest of the mask, and take a blow torch to piece of metal to “bake” on the dry moly. This seems a lot more practical than wasting your laser tube life on something that could be done at a higher temperature in less than half the time (conservatively speaking)!

2 Likes

Nice. So not a sienna/brown like I was thinking could happen. Good to hear. I would still be interested in seeing your pictures if you happen to still have them.

I agree. And then you would not have as much risk of rubbing off the marking as you would not have to scrub off the excess moly afterwards.

Why not just use Cermark/Thermark? It “just works” and the marks are permanent. Aluminum can be tricky though, never could get the marks to stick to 6061. Might sound pricey but a can goes a LONG way, and your time is probably worth more than the $20 you’d save testing moly lube four hours if not days.

2 Likes

You can find it here along with a lot of other fun/useful laser stuff.

1 Like

Do you have photos of the results of your trial?

1 Like

We recently built a custom laser cutter for a group of artists from Mexico City called Astrovandalistas that they used to engrave a bunch of rocks and spread them around as sort of retro-future artifacts. You can see some pics of the cool rock engraving they did on their FB page.

The custom cutter we built had to solve a similar issue as the GF. Because wild rocks are never perfectly flat we needed to keep the focal distance over the entire surface. Instead of cameras + motors we just 3D printed a spring-loaded lens holder and put some wheels on the bottom so it could skate across the surface. Worked like a charm!

The machine could also be bolted to rock walls to do futuristic tech-cave drawings.

5 Likes

p.s. One reason the moly lube might not be sticking permanently is cleanliness of the material. Make sure your metal passes the Water Break Test before applying any coating.

3 Likes

Here’s a nice one from out Instagram

2 Likes

At the time I was a student so it was cheaper to go this route and at that point my time was cheaper! Plus, it was something to experiment and see. There’s nothing more satisfying than finding a hack that works just as good and is load cheaper. In this case, I think I might just buy the Cermark (especially the pearl color!), but not after I try the blow-torch idea on the dry moly lube!

1 Like

Continuing the discussion from Cermark Alternatives:

There are other possibilities too!

2 Likes

I looked this morning and couldn’t find it :frowning: I can see it in my head but that’s not useful. Now that I think about it, I might still have it at home in a box. Sorry!

1 Like

Yeah, #picsoritdidnthappen. :smile:

2 Likes