Experimenting with Tile

[Joseph Tovar]

Hi all,

I was playing around with some different tiles and thought I share in case it can help anyone out there...Some of the pictures don't do them justice because of the flash and bad lighting :-(

These are just some sample tiles I picked up at Home Depot and Lowes, except for the Laser Tile.

Laser Tile:
The little swirly design is 100% black, and the photo of my old halloween costume is a basic photo jpg. The photo was tried 3 different ways...plain greyscale, using the Andromoda Photoshop Filter, and using the Goldmethod Action script I found through the forum.

Black Glazed Tile:
The larger swirly design on the black tile was buffed with a white canvas paint which makes it look pretty good.

Terracotta Tile:
The terracotta tile looks nice after lasering since there is a high contrast on the engraving.

Glass Tile:
I was going to try to reverse engrave on the tile, but after my first few tries, I noticed that the white material on the back turned black when it was hit by the laser....It actually looks exactly like the laser tile. After a few more tests on the tile, I went ahead and did the large black swirly image and it looks pretty good. Does anyone know what coating is on the back of the glass tiles? It'd be nice to pick some of that coating up and make my own laser tiles on the plain $0.28 white tiles.

Anyways, hopefully this was useful to someone wanting to engrave tile.

[Joseph Tovar]

Here's a few other samples using different tile...
Some of this cheaper tile engraves with a nice contrast giving it a good look.

All the engraving come out solid, but the angle of the photos is reflecting the flash making the engraving look uneven. :(

[Steve Clarkson]

Joseph,

Thanks for sharing. What the heck is an Andromeda filter?

[Clyde Baumwell]

Andromeda makes Plug=ins that creates an engraved looking pattern. I use a company called Alpha and a plug in called Engraver II (a lot cheaper). These plug-ins convert a photo or other images to old style looking engraved images or a Wall Street Journal type image.

www.andromeda.com/

http://www.alphaplugins.com

I have found a pretty useful way to engrave the cheap tiles. After engraving (I don't need a lot of power and I use a pretty high speed) I coat the engraved area with a broad tipped Sharpie, then I use 00 steel wool to remove most of the Sharpie ink off the non image area and remove the rest with any cleanser or Armor All.

[Joseph Tovar]

What he said :-)

I use the Andromada filter because it was cheaper then Photograv, but I'll have to check out Engraver II.

Clyde, Do you have any pictures? I'd like to see how they came out. Thanks.

[Clyde Baumwell]

Joseph
Here are a couple of tiles. The dog was run thru Engraver 2 from a photo-It looks like I got a little moire. Ludwig Van is some clip art I have

[Joseph Tovar]

Thanks for the pics!

[Dave Johnson29]

It looks like I got a little moire. Ludwig Van is some clip art I have

Clyde,

Not Moire, I'd say it is more likely banding from mismatched DPI of the pic and laser. Check the other white tile thread.