Hello! New to glowforge, I have made a few projects with draftboard and acrylic. I am slowly getting my feet wet. My grandfather (a WWII veteran) has some quite faded tags listing his ship name and number that he uses on his vehicle. I have researched a bit and think I understand the technical aspects of Cermark vs anodized aluminum, but I am stuck on understanding what the finished product will look like comparing these two. Also on amazon there are anodized black plate blanks and silver ones, however I cannot find anything that says what they would look like after lasering/ engraving.
Does anyone have any advice or photos to share that they have run? Also, is it possible to do different shades of engraving on this type of medium- i.e. to have the ‘shadow’ outline of a ship under text or would it have to be one layer only?
You should be able to find lots of photos here if you search on those two terms (anodized aluminum, cermark). I’d do one real quick for you but I’m on my phone right now and it’s a pain.
Figure in general Cermark and similar puts a black mark on silver metal
Removing anodizing leaves a silver mark on whatever colour the rest of the anodizing is - or engraving away everything but what you want leaves a silver metal with the design left in the colour the anodizing is
There are folks on here who have used spray paint which allows you to “layer” colours - so on a piece of plain metal:
Also if you look for “dog tags”, likely you’ll find more pics/info. “License plates” brings to mind what are on cars, and I don’t think that’s what you meant…
I have a few blank anodized aluminum license plates I intend (some day) to laser.
Here’s a link to an amazon page that is close to what I’m talking about, but you can also find them on ebay, etsy and others. Plenty of color options. I don’t know specifically how these would work, but I’ve used plenty of coated, painted and anodized aluminum with good results.
you can see that the engraving is a similar silver color on both. Engraving on silver anodized makes a mark that is difficult to see, at least at some angles.
Blockquote There are folks on here who have used spray paint which allows you to “layer” colours - so on a piece of plain metal:
mask it
carve away the boat from the masking
spray it grey (without removing the masking)
remove the masking
put on new masking
carve away the words from the masking
spray the words (without removing the masking)
remove the masking
Blockquote
Thanks deirdrebeth! So in this example if am reading right you are basically lasering the ‘template’ out of the masking for the spray paint for each item step by step?
You all are awesome thanks for all the help! I knew already by reading a lot on the forums that this community is so good to help each other, and that is definately one thing that made it easier for me to buy a glowforge!
