Lasering Photos on Glass

[Laura Zaruba]

Any suggestions/tips, especially using PhotoGrav? I'm not having any luck so far.

[Michael Wells]

Hi Laura,
What exactly are you having trouble with when lasing on the glass? That will help us answer you better.

I normally cover the working side with newspaper or paper towels, wet but not sopping, so that they lie completely flat against the glass. Crank her up and go!

I have also used light release paper masking tape on small or rounded jobs with good luck. The power usually is dependant on the quality of the glass. Actually the lower quality which has a higher lead content lases better. If I missed the problem, let me know...
Michael

[Laura Zaruba]

Oh yeah, I forgot about the newspaper trick. I just put some water on the glass and went at it.

Well, my problem is similar to when I first started working with marble...the engraved image is either almost pure white or very pixelated. I think once I dropped the dpi down to 150 it got better, but not quite there yet. I was also playing with the speed and power. Unfortunately, Photograv doesn't have parameters for glass so I was using the acrylic settings and trying to manually adjust from there.

I'm currently practicing on a glass pane from a photo frame I messed up (go figure!) but ultimately I want to laser glass ornaments, which I'm currently getting from ULS. Haven't actually tried the actual ornaments yet b/c I thought I should be able to get a fairly decent pic on "normal" glass first. I've seen websites that have photos as clear as I've been getting with marble and the ornaments look almost identical.

[mike wallis]

Hi Laura,
I have a Photograv Glass Param that works well. It should have come with your copy of Photograv and is located on the cd under "new params" folder. I'll E-mail it shortly just in case you didn't get it.
Mike

[mike wallis]

This picture dosn't do it justice but here is a engraving on glass.
It was engraved at 600 DPI using wet news paper. I think I used the recomended speed and power setting in the Mini's manuel "not sure".
Im a big fan of the engraved glass but it poses certain challanges to get the contrast needed to be visable. I've found that the best contrast is when a dark background is behind it and light directly pointed at or behind the glass.
A shadow box with a light in it would be ideal.
Mike

[Shaddy Dedmore]

jorlink
(http://www.jorlink.com/)MetalMark for metal and CeramicMark for glass/ceramic

I haven't tried it, but was recomended to me, just thought I'd pass it on. Comes in colors for the glass.

Not sure how it would work doing photo stuff, but I assume it might be OK if you keep the dpi low.

Mike: So the photo was rendered at 600dpi, and you used the 600dpi setting on the engraver? Or did you use Photograv (which I believe renders to 250-300 dpi)

[mike wallis]

Hi Shaddy, yes the Photo was both processed and engraved at 600 dpi using Photograv . I have'nt tried it yet but Photograv can process up to 1200 DPI.
I've been meaning to try some marking solutions like Jorlink, I hear nothing but good stuff about it.

Mike

[Michael Wells]

Hey Mike, give this a try sometime. Take one of your glass engravings and light it from the edges. I use the rope lights that you can get in different colors, but the transferance of the light to the engraved part of the glass can really be striking! Especially on the black backgrounds.
Michael