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James & Zelma Litzmann
01-27-2007, 3:07 PM
We have tried without much success to engrave on the 12 X 12 floor tiles, other than marble or granite. Has anyone here ever had any luck at this? Is there a trick to it or what?

Thanks for any input into this question.
James & Zelma (Psalms 18:2)
Inscriptions Of The Heart

Ashton Waters
01-27-2007, 3:26 PM
I haven't done it myself, but from spending time here at the Creek, I think you have to use Cermark or some other product on the regular tiles that you would buy at Home Depot or other such stores. You can look on the Laserbits web site and it should tell you which product is right for your particular project. Good luck.

Ashton

Shari Loveless
01-27-2007, 3:27 PM
We've done some of the big 18 x 18 textured tiles from Home Depot. Sprayed them with cermark (glass version) and lasered away. Used both photos and line art. They came out really nice. We put them on the wall though, not the floor. For some reason I never had much luck just lasering and then trying to ink fill.

S

Joe Pelonio
01-27-2007, 7:55 PM
Some of the off-white matte tiles will laser nicely in a brown color, but it's very hard to find them. I still have a couple, the color name was Calypso.
They used to have them in 8" and 12" at HD and Lowes but no more.

Bill Cunningham
01-27-2007, 8:41 PM
I have lasered and colour filled the el-cheepo white 'wall' tile from HD.. The photos that were processed though photograv, were able to be burned deeper and therefore accepted the Acrylic black paint that was wiped on, left to set for a minute or two, then wiped off..Line art also works well.. I also tried using the 300 dpi epilog driver halftone to laser the raw greyscale. The photo could be seen, but because the individual dots of the halftone were much smaller than the black areas of the photograv image, the paint did not work very well at all..
Of course, this was 'wall' tile, much softer material than floor tile .. Cermark will give you the best results.. I have not used the cerrmark for glass, I just use the ordinary spray can cermark and it works just fine.. this is a 'wall' tile done with ordinary metal marking, spraycan cermark

George M. Perzel
01-28-2007, 7:12 AM
Hi;
Here's a pic done with Photograv on a white, matte floor tile- the type Joe talked about. Tile has terra cotta color base. Pretty inexpensive at HD but hard to find as Joe mentioned.
Best regards;
George
LaserArts

James & Zelma Litzmann
01-28-2007, 9:11 AM
We believe that the ones we've seen were sandblasted, not engraved. Now, we have to decide if we want to try sandblasting, how expensive is it, what type of equipment is involved for good production and where to go to learn, is there a Sawmill for sandblasting, (haha)?

We want to say thanks to each of you that have reply and given us you opinion.

God Bless,
James & Zelma (Psalms 18:2)
Inscriptions Of The Heart

Bob Tate
01-28-2007, 10:05 AM
There is.

http://www.cuttingedgesandcarving.com/

The people are just as nice as they are here. It is a great sharing bunch of people. There is much to learn there.

Joe Pelonio
01-28-2007, 8:17 PM
James & Zelma,

I just got back from Home Depot in Issaquah, WA, and they have several boxes in stock of the Raggione White 12", $1.09/tile. Those are the ones I used to get a couple of years ago that laser nicely. Try the one near you.

Bill Cunningham
01-28-2007, 10:03 PM
I just went digging through my stuff, to see if I had a floor tile pic handy...
This is a HD floortile, I can't remember the name, but it has a bit of grey in it as well.. This example, has no colour, or cermark added. Just the natural colour of the raw laser engraving.. If I remember right, I used 100% power, somewhere about 3-5% speed, on a 35 watt Legend.. Just don't watch it, as it's etching, it like looking at a welding arc .. Very Very Bright.. I figured I would have to charge about $3.50 (Canadian:p ) per sq inch to do one.. One thing pretty neet, is if you outline the letters with a vector burn About 10% speed @ 5000 freq. and look at the results under a magnifying glass it looks exactly like a bead of weld outlining the letters..

Joe Pelonio
01-28-2007, 10:21 PM
I just went digging through my stuff, to see if I had a floor tile pic handy...
I figured I would have to charge about $3.50 (Canadian:p ) per sq inch to do one.. One thing pretty neet, is if you outline the letters with a vector burn
I just did a two 8" ones for a guy, $50 each, and a 12" for another $75. You have to make an educated guess as to how long it will take based on the photo, your's bill was not quite as busy as the ones I did but mine went a LOT faster on my 45 watt, I used 80 speed 80 power and it lookek more like a sparkler onthe 4th of July. Maybe a difference in the tile.

Glenn Corser
01-28-2007, 10:24 PM
We've had good luck with other types of marble. Rojo alicante is a reddish orange color that engraves perfectly white. We use it to make Longhorn stuff. There is also a green/gold granite that engraves well and can be color filled with gold RubnBuff - works for Baylor stuff.

Bill Cunningham
01-28-2007, 10:32 PM
This was also a 8" tile Joe, but the glaze was real thick, the laser never burned through it, just remelted the surface, and made it a bit darker.. I've never tried any other floor tile, only wall tiles mostly because I had a bunch of these left over.. (guess what colour my bathroom floor is :D ).. The terricotta tile you used, must be the difference, because on most other materials and settings the 35watt is only a bit slower than the 45 watt and the setting you used were 'quite' a bit faster.. I'll have to see what they have at our HD the next time I go..

Bill Cunningham
01-28-2007, 10:40 PM
The HD Brown Marble 'Empidor Lite' works pretty good too..
heres one from a earlier post
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showpost.php?p=477863&postcount=5