Has anyone engraved on Towel Grabbers from Amazon?

[dilsaverbrian]

A friend asked if I could engrave her logo on some towel Grabbers from Amazon.
They are a silicone “rubber Band” for towels on your beach chair/seat.
I am a newbie still… ;-( and need a little advice.
What settings do i use? has anyone ever tried such a thin piece of silicone before?

Thanks!

[dklgood]

Welcome to the forum.

We can only discuss settings for non Proofgrade materials in the Beyond the Manual section of the forum. That being said, the using the search function revealed quite a few threads regarding engraving silicone. Some provide settings as well as tips. Search results for 'silicone' - Glowforge Owners Forum

[rbtdanforth]

It is a bit tricky to make flat without stretching. I engraved some silicone bracelets and then hit them with with a marker to bring out the shape I used 80 power, 680 speed, 340 LPI but your results could be different. That is just what I did.

[rvogt]

Moving this to Beyond the Manual to allow settings info…

[kittski]

Apple watch bands are also made out of silicone and were super popular engraving items, so searching for info about them might help. This will get you started.

But it’ll still take a little testing to get it just right because your bands sound much thinner than a watch band, so if it were me, I’d get a few extra to play with. Maybe start a little test engrave at one of the recommended watch settings, and if it’s too deep, back the power down a bit or up the speed and try again. If you just do a little test square, you can probably fit several tests on one band until you get it right.

https://community.glowforge.com/search?q=apple%20watch%20bands%20settings

And using a jig to hold them flat helps, and I suggest using set focus and confirming where set focus hits on the bands, because if your material is narrow, set focus may miss the band and measure in the wrong spot. (Watch to make sure the little red focus dot hits on the band, and not on the tray.)

Engraved Silicone Bracelets

I’ve ordered these before but wanted to try making my own, just to see how it works. Seemed like a good time since I needed them for my kid’s school stuff. Had to scrub them pretty good with toothbrush and toothpaste (no specific reason for toothpaste other than it was there and I thought the grit would be helpful). Settings were: 700/80 225 single, focus set to .47 even though it measured .27 [69276027_10104495117959603_5516910192068919296_n] [68875666_10104495118019483_6157166558931058688_n…

Or instead of a jig, you could use a holdown pin. (If you don’t have these yet, they’re a game changer and must-have!) This is my personal favorite version, but there are several good iterations.

Honeycomb bed holdown pins

Sure if you want some phallic pins i wont stop you lol. My dad was kind enough to point it out after i sent him a picture of the ones i just cut One thing i found that would always happen with origional design is when i press them in i would also press on the un sported side and it would cause them to crack just below the head, with this style im forced to either press onto the piece or straight down. harder to break. [5] bed pins mk 2.5.zip (2.9 KB)

Good luck and let us know how it turns out!