I’d definitely be interested in seeing laser safe masking in the Proofgrade catalog!
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Would white Con-Tact work for this?
Not the vinyl stuff, that would be bad. I think he was talking about something more like masking tape, (or paper-based application tape / transfer tape like TransferRite )
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Thanks. Man, I really need to bone up on what types of materials can be put through a laser without killing me. Here I am just, “La dee dah! I will cut ALL THE THINGS!”
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In Canada, I have gone to Windsor Plywood in the past, they have a fair number of stores around the country. Plus they are nice enough to keep some off-cuts for people to have as samples.
haha, my pleasure. I wish we could just cut all the things! Vinyl and PVC and emit harmful HCL when lasered, very bad for both you and your machine. Some other types of plastic we shouldn’t mess with because of melting etc. A good starting point for that is here and then this thread
I think this is the most recent thread about masking tape stuff, and this one has some good info too, including where some people like to buy thiers.
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That is the plan.
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As a bit of a follow up to that question, will the material ID be all over the masking or in one specific location on each side? Just wondering if we’ll have to cut around the ID to be able to use the material ID until the sheet is gone. (if that makes sense?)
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This is all really helpful. Thank you so much!
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Or for people who are prototyping something and expect to be going through a bunch of iterations. You could just use other cheaply-sourced stuff, but if there are any clearances or other things that are dicey, those might have to be retuned.
If I were doing this and had infinite time and resources (ahem) there would be (at least) two kinds of seconds: one that doesn’t meet material specs, the other with local or global cosmetic issues.
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TBD - we’re starting with a single marking.
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Once you scanned the material in, I would think you could save the settings so you wouldn’t need to scan them again, right? So one marking should be sufficient.
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If you cut part of the material for a project, you could potentially end up damaging the barcode and making it unreadable. For something that is going to be used as an automated identification feature, redundancy is key.
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You bring up an interesting point! It seems one way to solve this would be to scatter barcodes (or QR codes) all over the protective covering in a very discrete way, like using yellow ink–just visible enough for the camera to see but barely visible to the eye. Using a highly chromatic color like that, the QR codes could be removed from camera images in software (think green screen techniques), so as not to interfere with drawings that might be used for cutting or engraving.
(Fun fact: printing barely noticeable yellow patterns is one way that law enforcement tracks down money counterfeiters! http://seeingyellow.com/)
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I’m hoping that the settings come pre-saved regardless of if you even had their material from the start to be a jumping off point for testing non-Proofgrade materials.
As soon as the Proofgrade materials hit the community the settings will spread fast. Might be presaved but not that big of a deal. The Glowforge S/W will allow us to enter and save settings.
That is an awesome idea! I didn’t know about the barely visible yellow! I had assumed having QR codes scattered over the covering would mess with the trace functionality, but the yellow may be the perfect solution.
I can’t remember or confirm the information but the community got the impression way back that the plan was to have “invisible” barcodes or QR codes. A frequency that the camera can see but we can’t. The information is not from something Dan has said in the forum but may have come from one of the videos. Can’t guarantee we didn’t assume it. One of my replies from January:
If that’s the case then I may end up just cutting out the barcode (or qr… Depending on what they use) and keeping that safe for the day GF to scan whenever I use that material. (or write down the settings.)