Updated: Natural Rubber Engraved Initials Stamp and Hallmark

[cynd11]

Fantastic! Can’t wait to try it!

[ianauch]

This is cool to see. I work for an ad agency that does a lot of event invites. So we buy a ton of custom stamps to dress up the envelopes.

Our production has been bugging me about when i’ll be getting the GF so i can start making them for him.

[johnwills]

Thanks for this, @marmak3261! Custom rubber stamps is one part of the business model I’m planning for my Glowforge. Good to see a real world example showing what I can expect.

[ian]

There was talk a while back of a rubber stamp mode. Does it exist yet?

[Tom_A]

Nice experiment, as usual!

[marmak3261]

I didn’t quite understand the topic way back in the fall of 2015. Now that I have engraved this stamp and looked at other stamps in the office, I know what you are talking about.

Rubber Stamp Mode

A quick question: Will the Glowforge have a Rubber Stamp cutting mode - where the edges of the cuts are slightly sloped to give fine detail extra strength?

The request is for the ability to make a slope from the surface of the relief to the base of the engrave so that each point on the engrave has a wider base for stability. The 3D engraving examples might be the best indication that something like this may be possible.

Here is another topic that discussed the issue of angled cuts regarding dovetails.

Laser-Cut Dovetails (YouTube video)

Somewhere around here people were talking about laser-cutting dovetails. I had an idea of a way it could be done so I thought I’d give it a try. Video below… [Laser-Cut Dovetails (proof of concept)] Just like with the Stanford clips, I’d probably just stick with good ol’ finger joints (AKA tabs) since they work pretty good and are much easier and faster.

There have been many other threads that looked at this option, including one with @dan posting a stepped pyramid to show a layered relief engraving.

I can see how a tapered base would be helpful. At the moment my stamp has a narrow silhouette right down to the bottom of the engrave. Over time, I’m sure those narrow ridges would wear down.

[henryhbk]

Pretty cool. About how long was the engraving for the stamp? Think about for an event (say a celebratory group dinner or something at your parish) you could make custom stamps for each attendee as take-homes.

[marmak3261]

I can’t quite recall but it was under 10 minutes at that resolution.

[morganstanfield]

SO FUN! This is going to be a feature I use a lot, and I’m delighted you showed us the handle you created. Again, you’re saving me a lot of future work. I could hug your clever self.

[henryhbk]

So that makes a small group of these a 1-2 hour project (and I am guessing doing them all at once is faster than each one individually). Can you get the ash off with compressed air to speed it up?

[kennethclapp]

Thanks for doing this stamp @marmak3261. Stamps are part of what’s on my initial to-do list (stamps for teachers in our smaller school district with the mascot and stuff on them. I’m been curious to see someone try one out. Once again, your the man!

[marmak3261]

Are you telling me to get off my ash?

A small paint brush works very well. You can just blow it away with a good puff. It seems to collect on the upwind finished section of the engrave and doesn’t bother the point of contact with the laser.

I think engraving 1 inch diameter areas like this would be doable for a group of folks, but finding the balance with size of engrave, the resolution and engraving times is important while people wait.

[Jules]

@marmak3261

Are you telling me to get off my ash?

How am I supposed to cut down on commenting when you come up with stuff like this? ROFL!

[Xabbess]

This cracked me up! Dare I say how far this might be taken…?

[tim]

Such a cool stamp holder, too. Looks great!

[marmak3261]

One added detail: put an engraving of just the initials on one side of the handle before assembly and match that with the top of the stamp. Didn’t think of that ahead of time to allow for stamping in the correct orientation

[dan]

I haven’t tried rubber stamps, but if you wanted the effect of “rubber stamp mode”, I would try the following.

• Create your design in white (although my example here was black)
• Select the layer with your white design on it
• Set an outer glow for the layer with the options shown, except select white instead of black (in the color selector just underneath “noise”)

That should give you a gradient that rolls off to black (as shown, it rolls off to white), which will be treated as the rounded corners you were looking for when you engrave.

[Tom_A]

For real?! That’ll work?! I wanted that to be true! I’m REALLY happy about that. Now if I only had a super-cool lazery thingy…

[dan]

I don’t know as I haven’t tried, but some variation on that should.

There’s a similar option with Illustrator and effect…outer glow, I think. You’ll need to rasterize before printing it, though.

[Tom_A]

@dan

You’ll need to rasterize before printing it, though.

Yep. You’d mentioned that on a similar post the other day. VERY cool. I want to try it so badly now!