Very sharp! 
2 Likes
Another possibility:
- using a light-tack glue/tape/whatever, attach the black to a sacrificial board (mdf, draftboard, whatever)
- engrave the black (or score, whatever) as a mirror image. The point is you don’t want any crumbs–anything left you want to stay where it is.
- Glue the black to the clear acrylic.
- Peel the sacrificial material off the “front” of the laminated plastic. This is now the front of the piece, and no longer a mirror image.
- engrave the back for the light transmittal.
BTW: that’s looking great!
2 Likes
So that’s an 18 point font. The amount of tiny black plastic bits that I had to remove was astonishing. There were just little bits of black plastic all over the table. And then I’d shake the crow and more would come out!
2 Likes
I can imagine! Stunning results though, so worth it in the end! 
2 Likes
I want to understand but I think I’m not getting it. Why would engraving the back be better than engraving the front?
1 Like
Wow…thats small text…lol
Wonder why the t’s, f’s and some l’s and s’s are not as cut out…they look skinny.
I was going off a bit of what you were saying above about the shapes of the two are different. I assumed you meant by this that the backlight engraving would be to provide an even glow by catching the edge light as perhaps a frosted bar behind each line? Otherwise I didn’t understand why etching through the front of the black-on-clear would cause any issues.
As for engraving on the back for edge lighting, that’s what I’ve seen some of the other projects use–providing a gloss surface on the front with the lighted frosted surface floating behind the front.
But more importantly for what you’re doing, I was thinking that you would want a perfectly flat surface to adhere the cut black to. That would make all of the inner hole pieces adhere properly–whereas if you engrave the backlighting on the front, the surface will be uneven.
Just thoughts I had. I’ve never done this kind of thing–so just thinking through the problem.
1 Like
Whoa! That’s a fun project! Sorry to hear about the mistake! It’s always a bummer when you get a job ready and feel like it’s all set and then one minor issue turns out to be a very large issue. I’m glad you shared this though, because I teach typography in the morning and we’re going to dig into the anatomy of type. (Those areas inside the letters you’re talking about are called “Counter Space.” You’ll be glad you know that if you ever end up on Jeopardy 
).
This gives me another, perfect, real-world example of why this stuff is valuable for designers to be aware of. (It goes right along with my lesson from a stage design that wanted the letters “FAQ” set-up to stand on the floor with some lightbulbs making a dotted stroke through the middle of each letter—you learn rather quickly that letters are not symmetrical like you think they are and you need to choose the right font for the job or you end up cutting-off the tail on the Q or leaning it sideways to make it stand.)
2 Likes
You know, I don’t believe I’d change it…yeah the centers of some of the letters are missing, but it gives it a bit of an “otherworldly” look that isn’t out of place with that. And it’s still completely legible.
It suits it.
3 Likes
I think I still need to get in there with my dental pick in a few places. But I want to wait until the weld is fully set. So over the weekend to be on the safe side.
I don’t disagree. Just wasn’t what I’d planned. So I have to let it grow on me as it is. I’m going to make another one when I get the thinner black. So I’ll be able to see it both ways and give away the one I don’t like as much. 
Hehe… Mistake just means I learned something new.
Definitely was a fun little project though. Nothing fancy, obviously. But a neat look to it, I’d say. I originally thought I’d just have the words on a rectangle. Then I thought I wanted to have a crow on it. And then my face lit up and I said “No! I’ll make the entire shape a crow!” I really loved that idea. (Mostly because I’m not that creative, so when the idea came to me I was pretty proud of myself. ) And now that I have it, I still love the idea. 
Yes. I can see that. Interesting. I wonder how it would affect the look of things. There’d be additional depth. Hard for me to imagine if that’d be a good thing or a bad thing in this case. I’m thinking it could be very cool. And the perfectly flat surface, as you said, could be a very good thing as well.
So I just realized something sad… I have no way to do the back accurately. I can’t think of a way to engrave the back of the clear piece and also cut the black piece so that they’d align. The accuracy just isn’t there to do that at this time, I believe.
Two things I can think of to accomplish it…
- Possible I could cut the crow, weld the back on, and then engrave through the black to the clear. But I’d think that wouldn’t give me the nice sharp cut in the black.
- Just engrave the entire space where the words would be. Just solid rectangle. It’s just one line, so maybe that’d work out okay.
4 Likes
I would think a jig would help with that. If you cut the black reversed and engraved the back you would be dealing with the same alignments.
1 Like
a trick I read about here somewhere, cover the bed with masking tape (or tape down a piece of paper) and do a quick score of the outline of the shape you want. THEN place your material on top of the scored outline. You might be able to get closer precision with that.
Biggest benefit to that process is you will know exactly where the laser will cut. Biggest downside is that you will be dealing with human precision and not machine precision.
Maybe. But I’m not convinced it’d be accurate enough to perfectly align. But maybe if I offset the letters just a hair it’d give me some wiggle room. I dunno.
Sure. But I can’t imagine that’d be accurate enough to perfectly align two separate materials.
I’m going to wait until my 1/16" black arrives and play some more. I’m also thinking I may increase the height of the crow’s body (and maybe leave the tail alone) to allow me to increase the font size a little. It kinda needs it. There were also a half dozen more fonts I liked for this. I may try another one.
2 Likes