Glass etch -- I stand corrected

[Jerry Allen]

As I have mentioned in some previous posts, I just have never seen lasered glass look as good as sand blasted. I tried every trick mention here, wet paper soap, power, DPI, etc., but never even got close to any thing I can do on the blaster. I did settle for the fact that creating the mask on the laser works nicely and saves time.
I recently purchased some PhotoBrasive Laser Mask from Laserbits to try it out.
It works pretty well, although I find it difficult to get it to not wrinkle on a curved surface. I had the same difficulty with Raysist photo mask, so no biggie.
I did a couple of jobs using the laser to do the mask and blaster to finish as usual, but decided to play with the laser one more time. I jacked up the setting to 80% power and 100% speed which I would never do on glass because it's just too much power. The DPI on the laser was at 500. I made two passes at that setting with the mask in place and lo and behold, it came out fairly well.
It still is not blast quality and you can't get any deep cuts, but passable.

[Kim Maitland]

What laser machine do you have?

[Jerry Allen]

LaserPro Mercury 25W-Pinnacle

[Barbara Sample]

Hi,
I was wondering if you used a color fill? and if you did what did you use. I have been lasering my glasses at 100% speed and 60% power, maybe I will try 80% power and see what I get. I have a LaserPro Mercury 30W so it should look like yours right???:rolleyes:

So far things have looked good, but I have not had a lot of success with color filling them. Maybe it's because I do not engrave them with enough power. I am going to try it out.
Thanks for the input.
Barbara Sample
RGile Engravers

[Kevin Huffman]

Barbara,
The one thing you have to be careful about is not to shatter the glass. If it gets to hot it can shatter it into a million pieces. Not to say that I have ever done that or anything, I just heard from a friend of a friend of a friend. LoL

Actually I was on an install and did that. Ooooops. The customer was cool with it, it was only a dollar general glass that he bought in a set for $5.

[Jerry Allen]

Barbara,
Like Kevin says, and as I said above in the last paragraph, I would never use that much power on bare glass. When I used to do glass with just the laser I would use between 15-35% power and 100% speed. It's just the Photobrasive mask that makes it possible to use that power and it would probably work with less. I wouldn't try that without the mask.
No, it's not color filled. If I was going to fill it, I would just etch the mask and sand blast to get more depth. I think I've read of folks filling with just a laser etch, but it's no deep enough in my book. I use Liquitex Glossies for glass.

Here's one that's filled, but it was blasted: