Engraving oyster shell (esp. pearl oyster) with a fiber?

[John Noell]

Has anyone tried engraving oyster shell (esp. pearl oyster) with a fiber? They engrave nicely with my CO2 lasers but a friend (who wants to engrave shells among other things) is trying to decide between CO2 and fiber.

[Scott Shepherd]

I've never tried it but the general rule of thumb I've always heard was if it's organic, the fiber doesn't like it. I'm sure there are exceptions to that, like what frequency your fiber is capable of but it's worked pretty well for me. In general, wood, paper, stone, etc, don't really do well with the fiber so I'd assume it would fall into that category and CO2 would work better.

[John Lifer]

Nope, use a CO2..... Mine won't work on any shells that I've tried or also Pearl inlay.

[John Noell]

Thanks for the info. (And sorry for the slow reply. Life got complicated.)

[James Minick]

Fibre wont touch it, will take a CO2. I tried with some beads from a popular craft store, couldn't mark with a 50W Fibre.

[Morgan Jackson]

I tried it for grins. Best I got was to create a "shiny" area on the cut surface.

You could, in theory, cut through it though. On my fiber I set the settings fairly low, set to continual burn and walked away. I came back "later" and the shell had broken, but half of the broken part had the nice crisp lines of the shape I was burning.

Short answer, no, you can't. ;)