this is a tile I scored today. I planned on engraving, but the design I used is a vector file. This means it would only fill in the areas rather than just the outlines (I would have to make it a bitmap for the engrave I wanted).
I figured a good, firm score would do the trick; I was right. Before I used the lazer, I covered the tile’s surface with a light coat of liquid dish soap (example: Dawn) to help prevent thermal shock. Maybe it’s not needed, but I treated it as though I was engraving glass.
Because the tile is black, I put a small piece of masking tape on one corner so I could focus.
Score settings:
speed - 170
power - full
passes - 2^
manual height selected, about twice the depth of the tile.
This tile has a matte finish, and it 0.28" thick.
^ I noticed the lazer made a well-defined line with just one pass, so i didn’t really need two. However, the 2nd pass made a ‘bold’ line. If I do it again, I’ll score the whole thing on one pass, then bold the outer line.
The thickness from defocusing the laser beam looks great on that tile. I’m going to share this with my wife who loved making tile art with our Glowforge when we first got it years ago, but wasn’t such a fan of the long engrave time and coloring/sealing each one by hand. I just need to find her some good tile that changes color when burned as well as yours!
Mine has a non-glossy finish and a bisque-white composition. I haven’t tried it yet on a glossy tile…let me see if I have one handy.
BRB
ok, @dan84 I finished a quick & dirty trial. I grabbed two random tiles and did a deep score with the same settings as before. None of my tiles have a glassy (vitreous) face–both of these have a satin appearance. The body of one is bisque white, and the other is a neutral grey.
The grey tile was not scored down to the body color, I believe. The white one, I can’t tell. What I notice is that the extra-wide score does not happen on all tiles. Notice the white one, I alternated # of passes (1 pass, 2x, 1x, 2x) outward; can’t really see a difference. The grey-bodied tile (hex) acted more like the black tile. The 2x pass is noticeable.
