So now that I am furiously making travertine stuff, figured my colleague’s brewery needed a custom coaster. So I reverse engraved the brewery logo into one of the Home Depot tiles. There is an interesting side effect. This was a full speed/power 450lpi 3-pass engrave and the tile got pretty hot after 90 minutes. Interestingly I noted cracking in the corner of the surface I assume from the heat.
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Is this with your new machine?
Travertine is by nature a stone with some voids in it, and they are normally filled with a mixture of cut dust from the stone mixed with I don’t know what, I presume a cement type mixture.
The cracking seems to be restricted to what looks like one of those fills to me.
Just a guess, but I suspect a thermal expansion differential between the materials. Too bad.
Congratulations on your forever machine Doctor! 
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No, just my PRU (the new machine is in the box)
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the cracked part does look like fill, but could also be an organic binder in the fill, In any case on a long engrave like that on stone, I would be worried about cracking unless the stone was especially strong and chemically stable. I watched a friend try to size a ring with a beautiful Amethyst that was exceptionally dark and when he was finished he had a beautiful clear quartz stone, so there can be many things that affect stone.
BTW many sorts of Glass particularly reds can do the same thing
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What a rocking effect - thanks for sharing!
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It is a cool effect though! Really goes with the imprint you engraved.
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