New to engraving and help needed please

[andy bolton]

hi there guys, i'm new to this forum and new to engraving machines too!!!

i've just bought a redsail m900, i'm wanting to do mirrors etc.
but the guy i bought it off had the following settings..

laser was at 80 and speed was at 250..

i tried one mirror (ikea) and it was very faint... hardly any backing came off the mirror..

i do appreciate any help and advice any of you can give...

many thanks

andy

[greg lindsey]

Welcome Andy,

Not sure about your machine, but the simplest way would be just keep trying speeds and power untill you get your desired results. Start low and slow and keep ramping up.

[Bert Kemp]

Not sure about your machine either but I would think those settings would have no problem with a mirror backing. I've done mirrors with a 40 watt at 100 speed and laser 80 laser

[Mary Geitz]

I've tried Ikea mirrors and they're just not very good for lasering. It took forever to blast through the backing and the result was poor. The mirrors I'm talking about from Ikea are the 8x8's that come in a pack of 5 I think.

[Joe Pelonio]

The backing on glass mirrors can vary greatly by manufacturer. You need to find a supplier with the sizes you want and good price then experiment to find the best settings. If you use acrylic mirror, the results are more consistent and you can also cut it into shapes. I have used it in 1/4" thickness for lettering on signs, looks great on black background.

[Dee Gallo]

Hi Andy, Welcome to the Creek!

You might want to try some cheapo Dollar Store mirrors. They tend to have very thin backing material, come in several shapes/sizes and are cheap enough to play with until you are happy with the results.

cheers, dee

[Martin Boekers]

The cheaper ones as Dee said, have a thinner or very little metallic backing. I have had some mirrors that the metal on the back was
so thick there would be no was to engrave it.

[Steven Cox]

Like anything settings will depend on the power available, so we can only guess what power machine you might have I suggest you update your signature and let people know what you have.

On my machine (60 Watt) I engrave a lot of mirrors both glass and acrylic. For the cheaper glass, 300mm a second speed @ 65% Power with interval of 0.01 mm for good quality glass 250mm a second speed @ 80% Power with interval of 0.01 mm and for acrylic 400mm a second speed @ 75% Power with interval of 0.01 mm

[Mike Null]

Recently I was having some difficulty with Cermark so I made a power grid to check my machine.

Here's an example. You can make some modifications for your purposes.