Engraved Wine and Chanpagne bottles

[Andrea Weissenseel]

did you ever heat about problems with engaved wine/champagne bottles ? I talked to a winery today and they said "oh my gosh, don't engrave them, because they burst easily" they didn't mean during the engraving itself, but afterwards.

Maybe engraving weakens the bottle - I must admit I never heard that before :confused:

Andrea

[Rodne Gold]

Andrea , The way a laser engraves glass could lead to shattering some time after. It actually thermally shocks the impurities in the glass which expand and fracture the glass. These fractures can grow , like a chip in a car windscreen that can grow and lead to the windscreen cracking , happened my vette
This is in theory tho , I have personally never actually seen one shatter or heard of one doing so after lasering...

[Liesl Dexheimer]

I've engraved regular wine bottles as well as Dom Perignon & some whiskey bottles but I've never had a problem with snapping.

[Darryl Hazen]

Andrea,

Champagne bottles are made much thicker than wine bottles in order to contain the internal pressure from the carbonation. That being said, as long as the engraving is slight, it shouldn't pose a problem. You only want to mark the bottle not deeply engrave it. Sand carvers that sand blast champagne bottles appear to remove more material than if you laser the bottle.

We've lasered champagne bottle with no problems.

[Darren Null]

I've exploded a wine bottle by filling it with my "VSOP" Chilli sauce. I'm proud of that.

[Andrea Weissenseel]

lol Darren :D

Thank you all for your answers, I admit I was a bit worried :)

Cheers, Andrea

[Gordon Kircher]

I've laser'd and sandblasted Champaign and Wine Bottles. The only time that I've broken one is on sandblasting... trying to wash off the resist. I washed off the resist and left it on the table. I must of left the bottle in the hot water to long.....about a minute later the bottom broke off the bottle.....it shot up and hit the light. NOT A PRETTY SIGHT, Champaign Everywhere. Sounded like a shotgun blast through the kitchen window. After I picked myself off the ground and changed my pants.... I figured I got careless. Now that was quite a few years ago and I've never had a problem since then... (not even with the bottles ;^))

[Andrea Weissenseel]

Wow - sounds great :D

I thought about what Rodne said - that was one thing that came to my mind, I remembered my little diamond cutter to cut glass.

I wonder if there is a difference between sand-blasting and lasering a bottle in regards to the durability of the glass.

[Darryl Hazen]

My guess would be that sand blasting generates more heat than the laser. This is a guess only. No data to back it up.

[Andrea Weissenseel]

I got some more information today. Wine bottles are no problem at all - the problem is with the champagne, because of the pressure that's inside the bottle in combination with heat. They told me that champagne bottles also have an additional coating on the outside, to strengthen the bottle. That coating is hurt whether the bottle is lasered or sand-blasted. The warmer the environment temperature is, the pressure in the bottle grows. Pressure is at about 4 bar at a temperature of 20° Celsius - so if a bottle falls over or tips anywhere, or just getting to warm it could easily explode :eek: (Gordon's example sounds just like that). Wine bottles are no problem, because no pressure is in there.

The company I talked to, has no experience with engraving bottles - but when their bottles are unpacked at the supermarket the personnel there sometime open the cartons with a cartonblade and scratch the bottles through the carton, these are the bottles they are talking about. They sell a couple million bottles per year - maybe next week I get some figures how many cases of "bottle explosions" happen during a year.

So my resumé for this is - I just stay away from champagne and just do wine bottles :cool:

Andrea

[Frank Corker]

I haven't had any break from a result of engraving. Anyway Andrea don't test this by engraving a bottle and dropping it on a concrete floor from 5 feet, because from my own experience I know that even non engraved bottles break. (Top Tip)

[Doug Griffith]

You might want to stick to a corkscrew as well.

http://lifehacker.com/5396212/open-a-bottle-of-wine-with-your-shoe

[Andrea Weissenseel]

lol Frank - I wouln't bring it over my heart do drop a full bottle of champagne for testing :D