Who says you can't etch / engrave metal with the GF? I just did! Well, sort of, lol

I think

MADE WITH MY
              :glowforge:
      AND ACID

would have been more accurate, but I can be inappropriately pedantic.

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Oooooo, if you’ve found a good laserable masking material for copper etching, that would be awesome! I’m doing it now with UV developing film and it’s a tedious process and only appropriate for flat materials.

Your example is gorgeous, and very exciting!

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Matrix, there’s a kid bending a metal spoon with his as if it were magic.

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Lol, yes, true, but I hope to display the plaque with future things that I make, so it’s going to be used a lot as a “I made this XXX using my GF” sign :slight_smile:

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Completely love this. Care to share a little more on your process for accomplishing this wizardry?

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OK, so here is where I learned how to do this, and also where I got the acid and other materials that I’ve made things with; it’s a great site & a great tutorial! Actually, just one of many tutorials that they have…

But it is based on what I will call “the old way”, of using transfer paper, that you would have to print out in reverse (on a laser printer, btw; an inkjet printer is useless for that), and then iron it on to your material.

That crucial step was hit and miss; the print didn’t always stick well, and once you peeled it off & saw that it didn’t transfer well…um, let’s just say “good luck in trying to fix it!”; you really needed to do it all over again.

Using the GF, I was able to cut the stencil right onto the material, using blue tape (any masking tape will do), and that is sooooooo much easier. Paint creep is always a problem I have, but I will be more diligent in the future & press the tape down harder!

OK, here’s the step by step:

Covered the plate with tape:

Cut the design; settings were 10% power, 100 speed:

Started using a sharpie, but it was old & crappy…so I got lazy and switched to spray paint:


Which worked pretty well, except for 4 things to keep in mind:

  1. Took waaayyy too long to dry; sharpie is instant, paint took overnight
  2. It bled under the tape in a few spots
  3. Stuck to the tape in a few spots and peeled away with it, requiring a couple of touch-ups with the sharpie
  4. Requires a much more rigorous removal effort with steel wool, compared to a sharpie

You can see the spots that I had to manually clean off where it bled, as well as touch up because it peeled off. These steps would not have been necessary if I had just gone and used a new marker, lol:

Added a border with a new (brown) sharpie:

The acid:

Taped the back fully, and had drawn on all the edges with a sharpie, to keep those areas protected:

Let’s take a 3 hour bath, shall we?! :slight_smile:

This is what it looks like when it first comes out of the bath (and baking soda for neutralizing) :scream:

But after some tender loving care with a steel wool pad, we get this:


Hope you guys like it! This is my biggest thank you to the community (especially all who have helped me in so many other areas), the staff at GF, and all the other customers…

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Thank you. Totally bookmarked this for future use.

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And, welcome to Glowforge bookmark # 192.

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On? or used?:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Looks good!
If you keep the bath agitated or brush the metal gently with a soft paint brush while it is etching you won’t get so much bubble tracking around the resisted areas.

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I knew some of you must have experience with this :slight_smile:

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Btw, you guys can also see where the lines are not perfect, and that is from the paint having bled under the tape, and me removing it with my fingernail was really not good enough; it needs to be super clean.

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Very nice. Thanks for sharing the process. I can see lots of applications.

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So, if a Sharpie resists the acid, you could just draw a picture straight onto the copper and etch it? Cooll!

Hang on, that method wouldn’t need a Glowforge! D’oh!

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So, you put the copper piece in the GF? Did you have any trouble with the copper reflecting the laser beam? Hmmmmm…

You might want to do a google search on Edinburgh Etch–there are additives you can add to your etching bath that will smooth out the etch and speed up the operation. At least, that has been my experience.

Thanks for sharing your process!

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Don’t believe so; seemed to scatter off instead of reflect back…but the surface was scratched up to begin with, instead of being a mirror finish…

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Note to self, steel wool on the metals.

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That is super inspiring. Definitely a highest score in my post rating system. Want to make it. Now I know what to make for my 200 subscriber goal on YouTube. If ever. Lol.

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Wow, that’s a real honor, thank you!

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Oh, forgot to mention…I listed this as a tutorial in the Laser Matrix. :wink:

If you guys are going to write-up tutorials though - put them in the Tips and Tricks holding tank. If I happen to miss them out here in the main forum, they will rapidly disappear forever into obscurity.

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