Help with a photograph

[Roy Nicholson]

I'm trying to but\rn a photo onto black Corian and it really wants to be inverted. So that I am butning the negative.

I've attached the original, The inverted and the inverted processed with Corian for Cherry.

It looks good in Photograv but when I save for engraving it seems to bring it back to a positive.

Can anyone offer any advice.

I've got 1 sample piece 45 x 45 mm which I was going to process as a Fathers' Day gift for my grandson to give to his Dad.

Last minute of course.

Regards

Roy N.

[Frank Corker]

Yes I can. The original picture must have a black background and not white if it is to be used on a dark background. Forgive the quickness of this picture but it's not 3.15 and I am way past my bedtime. Your original must look like this below (black) and not like yours (white) before you send it to photograv.

[Roy Nicholson]

Thanks Frank I'll give it a go.

Have a pleasant night's sleep.

Regards

Roy N.

[Roy Nicholson]

Frank,

I'm burning onto a dark Corian so I was really after a negative effect in the photo.

The photo burnt well and when the light shine at the right angle it was great but on a whole the image faded into the background aopart from the surround that burnt off so that the photo was in a white frame.

I ended up with this one... attempt 5,

I'll try to photograph the final picturte for you.

Not the clearest photo but it gives you an idea.

That Corian is very forgiving stuff... I didn't like the firsdt attempts so a couple of minutes with a fine grit sander and you'd be hard pushed to see that it had been previously engraved.

I'll have to try to get some more of that I an see quite a few things we could do with it.


Regards


Roy N.

[Frank Corker]

Ok, it's looking pretty good and I understand what you were saying, but half of your problem is that the corian has a lot of white speckles in it which is affecting your contrast. The other half of your problem is with the size of the picture, it's that small it isn't holding any detail or you are engraving it with too low a dpi setting.

If you want to try and boost the effect, get hold of some silver rub'n'buff from your local craft shop and polish into your piece of corian, I think you might have a more dramatic effect.

[Larry Bratton]

I am curious about Corian's engraving properties. After all, the stuff is actually plastic. As we know, cast acrylic will accept raster engraving and yield a frosted white look, similar to glass, extruded will not. Is it actually a good surface for raster engraving without fill? The result on this looks similar to what you get on granite..am I wrong?

[Bill Cunningham]

Although not as 'frosted' as cast, extruded will etch a photo very much like a piece of glass.. Once you have some contrast behind it... This is just a rough example in extruded acrylic..

[Larry Bratton]

Although not as 'frosted' as cast, extruded will etch a photo very much like a piece of glass.. Once you have some contrast behind it... This is just a rough example in extruded acrylic..
That's good to know Bill. What about the Corian?

[Bill Cunningham]

The only Corian I have is sort of a cream colour with flecks in it.. It etched pretty good, and then I rubbed some black ink into it for contrast.. If I can think of it tomorrow, I will hunt it down.. (it's laying around the shop someplace) and post a picture.. I'm pretty sure I used the cherry setting for that as well.. If your etching into black, once you have made the background black, run it through photograv, using the black engraves white material setting, (it will invert everything to a negative image with a white background) then rub in some white krylon fusion paint (just spray in on a cloth and rub into the engraving).. It should bond with the corian better than ink, acrylic or oil paint..

[Curt Stallings]

Roy, I may be missing something here, but you said that you used the Cherry setting in Photograv. If you used the black acrylic or black marble setting I think the inversion would turn out right.

Curt

[Roy Nicholson]

I initially used the cherry setting but I had inverted the photograph so it was in fact a negative.

When I ran it through Photograv the photo on the screen looked as if it would be right but when I saved it as an engraveable file it was no longer inverted and was not suitable.

I eventually ended running it through as black and it came out fine.

Someone had once told me use the cherry setting for everything...but not this one.

I'll post the final result with a comment for Frank.

Regards

Roy N.

[Roy Nicholson]

I tried the silver RubnBuff and it worked very well. I'm pleased with the result.

Your right Frank it was a very smal photograph but Dupont only gave me a little over a 45mm square sample so I was limited.

As I said earlier Corian is very forgiving stuff. I intially engraved it three different times on the back from different sides. Then once on the good side but wasn't happy with any of them so I hit it with some 120 grit sandpaper on an orbital sander and the final result is difficult to tell from the original. Maybe a litle less shiny but with no original to compare it to - it's very acceptable.

I'll have to try to source some offcuts becaue I think a full sheet is out of my line at the moment. I haven[t found a source of granite over here at a price I can justify. The only one wants to sell me by the sheet which means then aI would have to cut and polish and I'd rather get some finished pieces or tiles. I haven't fopund any granite tiles yet.

Regards

Roy N.