Hello out there! I engraved On slate (coasters) today for the first time and noticed that once I rubbed my finger over the design, it started to chip away. Has anyone else experienced that?
That’s the nature of slate in general. What were your settings? Sounds like possibly too aggressive. It should be able to bleach it without damaging the material too much. Or, it could just be that particular slate as well.
1 Like
Oh ok - I didn’t realize that. Thank you for the information.
The settings I used were:
Speed: 900
Power: 65
LPI: 340
Only 1 pass
Those don’t seem unreasonable, if anything maybe too low.
I stand corrected (by myself).
3 Likes
I use 900/80 for slate and have good results. I don’t use mineral oil.
1 Like
At what LPI? It might matter, the issue when stone spalls like this is usually thermal shock from too much laser energy. It happens a lot on vitreous materials especially but it can happen on plain stones as well.
2 Likes
225 LPI, vary power or patterns.
1 Like
Thanks for the bit above. Doing some slate tomorrow (only messed with it once way back when GF first started shipping). I recalled mineral oil, but the bit about letting it settle in, etc., is great.
I agree about LPI. I know it can definitely get to the point where it will create slag. The goal here isn’t really to try and dig into the slate (depth), but just get the color change.
2 Likes
Thank you all for your feedback. I’m going to pick up some mineral oil tomorrow and then change my settings. I appreciate All the help I receive from this forum.
3 Likes
This topic was automatically closed 32 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.