Question - Seashell engrave/etch

[deirdrebeth]

Random shell experiment

I grabbed these (mussel?) shells at the lake Saturday, thought I’d throw a laser on them. They’re ragged and whatnot, I just wanted to see how it turned out. [image] I generated a circular maze online and placed them at its center. Kind of fun.

Shells

there’s some interesting possibilities there, though i think the best might come if glowforge manages to make their auto curve-sensing features work. it’s a fair bit softer than rock so i can’t imagine that engraving wouldn’t be very cool. here’s a still from a youtube video: [image] there’s no real point in watching the video as it’s terrible, but the effect is nice. i also found where a french oyster producer has taken to laser etching its logo on oyster shells in an attempt to fight les c…

but no settings on either…

Ooh - here is a suggestion to use stone or glass settings which you can definitely find guidelines for by searching:

How to engrave on this shell?

Same as glass or other minerals. Start with stone and glass engraving settings, that’s an easy search on the forum. I will warn you that you’re likely to get get white on white with this, it may not have great contrast. I’m not saying to try it, just be aware that you might need to ink it or something to get it to stand out.