I have ideas already queued up and will have to be patient and learn how first so I don’t mess up on those items where I have one chance of getting it right (runes engraved on a sword).
I lead the Communion team at my church and we have double sided metal inserts for the trays we pass - it would be really cool to etch Scripture onto one side so we’d be able to have two “looks” to the trays we pass.
I signed up early (3 October, 2015) and have been disappointed that the ship date has slid repeatedly but the latest ship date (30 September, 2018) seems pretty solid.
Well that’ll have to wait until after my forge arrives. But I’ll look into it.
The windows in this house (or at least the couple of rooms that I might use for the forge) are not set up well to vent through. That’s why I elected to wait on delivery of the forge until the filter unit was available too.
Not sure what kind of windows you have, but a search for “venting” will give you ideas of what many others have done for solutions.
I strongly agree with @jbmanning5, mainly because the filter will need replacement media periodically, and probably won’t be an expensive, cumulatively anyway.
With a vent to the outside it’s “once and done”.
Another benefit is all that money spent on the filter and replacement elements could buy a lot of material.
BTW, the machine is not powerful enough to etch metal, but it can be permanently “marked”.
A forum search for marking metal will give you examples.
you mention a couple of engraving ideas, but as @printtolaser said, the GF will not etch into any metals. there are some surface marking options. the most common commercial application is ceramark, but others here have come up with other ideas that work to varying degrees of success.
Oh, I didn’t know that. I thought the 45 watt laser could. That was the main thing that got me to make the decision to buy the forge. I guess I need to do some fast research before it ships to decide if I actually even want it any more.
EDIT: I found this
That looks like etching to me. Maybe “etch” is one of those words that means one thing to a community in the know and another to outsiders (like “insect” to an entomologist - a generic bug to the rest of us)
EDIT2: The pendulum swings
So it really isn’t etching, just discoloring the surface. That’s really disheartening. I’ll have to think it over.
Oh, don’t limit yourself to metal! But the metal marking is great. There are so many materials that you can use!
These are great tools for a creative individual. I think the best.
The forum here is the best place for that! The search function will help tremendously. Also the “Made on a glowforge” thread is inspirational.
You could do magnificent engraving in wood that would be beautiful accents to your church.
I doubt you would regret your purchase!
I’ve done my MacBook as well. What you’re doing with something like that is marking the anodized coating of the aluminum - not the actual aluminum.
As others mentioned, you can definitely do stuff with metals but it has to be prepped correctly. Just bare metal won’t give you the results you’re looking for. Cermark is probably the most popular. It’s a commercial solution. Others have come up with some homebrew solutions, but it’s highly dependent on the material and alloy type.
Etch, engrave, mark - sometimes it’s like tomato and tomahto. Typically, etch and engrave is meant as having some kind of depth - where mark is a surface marking.
Technically, I think the example of the notebook would be etching, as JB said you are removing the anodized layer that is on the metal, not the metal itself.
If the item you referred to is aluminum, it could be anodized and then etched.
If it is not going to do what you want, then you should definitely cancel. The glowforge costs too much to not have it do what you want it to do.
However, I am a little confused by what you want. If you absolutely need your communion plate inserts to look like they’ve been engraved like a silver trophy, then you’re going to be disappointed: cancel. Cermark, while expensive, is a little more than discoloring the surface. It is a permanent change with good definition. Most of what has been done on the forums here, with the exception of anodized aluminum, has been a quest to find a cheaper Cermark. Sometimes the results are similar and sometimes they are cheaper, but that is how progress is made. Another thing to try is to make a resist/mask for the metal and then place it in an acid bath. That should get you some depth. I haven’t seen much experimentation along those lines. Again, not trying to talk you into it so much as hit pause on a quick decision. I sort of hope you had some other ideas for it, teaching design to a youth group? It seems to me you could have an engraver do a lot of communion plates for the cost of a glowforge. At any rate, you still have a few months before the filter is ready. Hopefully. Maybe.
You were right. The date has slid to Jan 30, 2019. But given that today is the 14th and the date has not moved. I’m hopeful that this time that my unit will arrive!
Given that the last information we were told was that everything was on track – though Dan refused to say what that meant – and the fact that our delivery dates have remained steady, one could logically conclude that yes, it’s getting close. However, there has been no information for more than two months, and the spread of those delivery dates – I also have a January 30th date, and I ordered on September 25 – is suspiciously narrow. Given the track record, I am not sanguine.
