Any ways to make different “shades” or engraving on Alu will always be just plain gray?
not expecting super contrast but would be nice to play with shades
In my experience with anodized aluminum, there is no variation - there either is or is not color. If you experiment and get a different result, please share.
Yup. The coating is either bleached or it isn’t. If you want shades, it would need to be convert to dots to simulate shades. This works better for things that you look at from further away versus staring at 2” away.
Has anyone here tried the Inventables anodized aluminum? About to give it a shot, but wonder if anyone has any cut settings recommendations?
I noticed tat Glowforge advertises that anodized aluminum can only be engraved, but I’m still curious as to whether anyone has tried to cut it? Or knows a reason why it’s a bad idea to try? Seems like if it fails to get all the way through, there good guidelines for cutting on another tool at least?
Thanks for all the helpful posts everyone! I really appreciate the resource this community provides.
The GF does not have anywhere near enough power to make the slightest mark on bare metal. All you can do is burn (etch) away anodizing (which is just a surface dye) or mark with a coating. Even the term “engraving” is misleading when working on metal, no material is removed.
Cannot cut aluminum with the Glowforge. I have good luck engraving anodized aluminum with 700/50/350, but you should test a small area since I don’t know how intricate your design is. I was engraving text. There are lots of posts about aluminum if you search the forum.
Proofgrade settings are for materials sold by Glowforge. They do not sell any aluminum items, thus there are no proofgrade settings. There are, however, lots of suggested settings provided by users.
Welcome to the forum.
You will find that the search function is a very useful tool. There have been many discussions of anodized aluminum. Here are some: