Settings for Engraving on Slate

do you mind sharing the amazon link for those? I like them and that turned out well.

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Hmm pre shiny coasters… do you have a product link for them? Might be handy sometime.

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Sorry for the late response. Here you guys go!

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I’m curious if it’s possible to go a bit deeper on the slate engrave by raising the power or if that’s ineffective. Anyone do a complete test of settings?

I don’t think you really engrave as much as discolor. I tried on one piece, a different type of slate, and had black bubbles coming out of it (glass???) I read someone else had the same issue. Travertine, on the other hand, you are removing material and can go quite deep.

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Detail here:

I seem to recall that someone did cut slate but can’t find the post.

One thing you’ll find with more power / slower speed on slate is that it can melt the slate and create little bubbles on your project.

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Thanks for the info. I picked up a few slate tiles this week and did some testing. Higher power, multi pass , ect. Multi pass had no effect after the first pass and high power turned out poor. Very consistent with everyone else.

Holy cow! How’d I miss this one? That is just phenomenal! :sunglasses::+1:

Would this be the same for a glowforge basic? or would the power be different?

Power and speed are the same for Basic and Pro unless full power is selected. Then the power is different.

thanks for these settings as well! - messed around with them (faster, slower, more power, less, multipass…) but your “original recipe” is very stable
-the only think i found (maybe) interesting was that: a little higher setting, (but not too high) made the slate go a little “yellow” instead of “white”…
and that a little lower setting, i could almost get a 3rd shade… a darker gray… so black slate, dark gray, and light gray as a “3-color” piece of artwork…
and… the “fun” of reversing images where black art burns “white” on the slate… or reversing THAT reversal and intentionally etching the slate white EXCEPT for the black you wanted to show…

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so… black on white and white on black:

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and 3 “shades”…

using “vary power levels” and not “convert to dots”

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Nice shades! :sunglasses: (Yes, it’s a very bad pun!)
Gonna have to experiment a little more with those!

Yeah, I’m having a lot of fun with the slate coasters and Google Image searches for “Star Wars stencils.”

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Wow! Thanks for sharing!

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and… found that the REAL trick is manipulating the grayscales on your files to get a varying amount of really good falloff (WITHOUT using the “dots” setting)
using the “vary power” you can get a decent amount of contrast without being entirely black and white…

here’s 2 pics from Star Trek on 6.5" x 9" slate…

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Awesome job, those came out really nicely!

I use vary power for almost everything but glazed tile, and even sometimes there too. It’s a really versatile setting because you can do so much with your greyscale curves.

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@evansd2 - thanks!
yeah… the “dots” (as long as powerful enough) always end up looking “dirty” - but on tile my grayscale soaks up as much ink from light to dark… it just ends up “messy” - so i might stick with “dots” on those? (at least using the "wipe on/wipe off sharpie method?)

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