Has anyone tried to engrave on cotton?

[judeeras]

Has anyone tried to engrave on cotton? I am trying to but it cuts through. ne tried to engrave on cotton? I am trying to but it cuts through. I have tried many different settings. Can anyone help?

[dklgood]

Do you mean cotton fabric? Like denim or lighter? Search the forum for fabric.

[jamesdhatch]

@MyDogsThinkImCrazy does an awful lot of textiles. She may jump in and drop some wisdom here.

[trually]

There are quite a few posts about cotton if you search the forum, here’s a few to get started:

Testing out cutting and etching fabrics: denim and light cotton

Continuing the discussion from Fabric etching!: Christmas day always gets me in a project mood, whether because I got a new tool or just have the time to devote to something creative (besides cooking, that’s a given.) I have been wanting to test fabric so @bwente, @jamesdhatch and @mspricethelibrarian’s interest coincided with my own plans. First a test pattern in Inkscape. Making the 1/2 squares different colors allows me to choose 10 different dots per inch resolutions available in the cus…

Pillow case engrave?

Cotton canvas as shown in your example pillowcase should engrave ok. Cotton turns a nice brown color when you engrave it. You’ll want to keep the power pretty low and the speed high, to avoid burning through the fabric. Thinner cotton fabrics will burn through easily but canvas (e.g. cotton duck) or denim work pretty well. Dyed cotton will often turn white even at power level 1 (or close to 1). Settings vary a lot depending on the exact fabric. What’s too low for one fabric may leave you with …

Cutting Thin Fabrics for Applique work (Also Heat-n-Bond)

Since I had some thin cotton fabric out after the last project…I wanted to see what would happen when I tried to cut it with the laser. Great success! It would take FORever to cut something like this out by hand, and the results would be no where near as neat as this one turned out. To prep the fabric, I covered it front and back with paper masking tape to keep the residue to a minimum on the fabric itself. Then I just taped it down to the grid, used some double sided Scotch 714 adhesive in …

Using on fabric?

ok, i was just thinking, has anyone tried to burn a design on cotton fabric? I am thinking it would be a cool way to use the glowforge to make designs.

[MyDogsThinkImCrazy]

There is a lot to fabric then just what it’s made out of. What is the weight of the material? Are you using interfacing? Cotton in general washes out because it makes ash. There is a post I did with option on waterproofing it to help prevent it some. But polyester is what I mainly use for fabric engraving. These items were engraved with the glowforge and the photo was taken after it came out of the wash:

Here is a post with random settings for fabrics though:

Glowforging My Fabric Scraps

I know there are already topics that address fabric but I feel this topic is unique and merits its own thread. Sew…aside from jeans and t-shirts, everything I wear is self made. Which leads to a lot of scraps. I started this topic to post the results of fabric scraps I glowforge and also provide the link for the fabric which will tell the details on it and might be helpful for others. I will add more as I acquire more scraps and anyone else is certainly able to post as well (ideally please post…

[rbtdanforth]

@MyDogsThinkImCrazy

Cotton in general washes out because it makes ash.

Polyester melts and cotton (wool etc) burns, so slightly melted is melted together and pure natural fabric has no such thing holding it together so it will break if it is not already burned through.

I have cut very little fabric but even before Glowforge I would melt the edges of rope and fabric to keep things from unravelling.

[MyDogsThinkImCrazy]

That’s another good way of putting it. It melts it

[judeeras]

Yes Cotton not as pot holders not denim.