Glass Engraving Question

[Liesl Dexheimer]

I love when you engrave glass and sometimes the engraving doesn't look like it took until the letters "pop". Does anyone have an explanation to this phenomenon? I thought I read it in a post somewhere. I'm assuming it occurs because of the expansion and contraction of the glass...something to do with the heat...??

[Frank Corker]

If you are getting a popping noise your power settings are way too high

[Dan Hintz]

Liesl,

See my posts here:
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?162187-Pictures-of-problem-engraveing-glasses

That may answer some of your questions. Glass can take seconds to micro-shatter as the stresses build up from cooling down. I don't often see it, but have on occasion, always with the cheap stuff. It shouldn't be more than a few seconds though...

[Chuck Stone]

I don't know why, but i have seen missing letters re-appear when I
wash them in cool soapy water with a green scrub pad. It looks like
the letters didn't take and the glass would be a reject, so I'm not
losing anything by giving it a scrub.. I guess the letters were really
there but my eyes aren't good enough to pick it up

[Liesl Dexheimer]

Thank you for the post Dan!

[lucas kreft]

when i had my laser i did research and found settings you could import into what i was using photograv i believe..
so there was black granite, wood, glass etc.. this was an epic find. i have never had experience in rotary machines, only laser.
glass is extremely fragile and i did a few awesome pieces on tempered and non tempered glass.

soap doesn't really work but let me say put black vinyl on one side of he glass and you will see everything!!
I just hated when lasering glass it created micro shards on the lasered side. so i washed the crap out of it did my best and applied vinyl on that side. the image was flipped horizontally. you can see part of the glass in this photo..black vinyl and you can see it.
one idea i also tried was filling the etch with paint or something.. didn't really work. and the particles of glass would fill the work area so wear a mask when you laser glass.188222188223

[Dan Hintz]

Lucas,

It works much better if you spray color first, then laser off the paint. Search for a post by me about glass and dragons... it's a pane of glass painted black, lasered, then painted gold. Looks nice.