Wine Bottle Engraving Question

[Don Young]

Hi All,
It's been a while but I have a problem that I am certain many of you have as well. I etch many wine bottle with and without a rotary device ( I laser straight down the side of the bottle often). The problem is that I cannot use soap and or water for obvious reasons with the labels to aid in keeping the etching looking perfect so sadly sometimes the glass pops off in small spots and spoils the look of the engraving. What do some of the rest of you do to get a good laser on most wine and liquor bottles. I am using 60% power and 300 speed. As with all of you laser tech's, I would like to promote my bottle engraving but won't do so if I can't be certain I can do the job perfectly.
You have always been helpful in the past so I know I can count on you for some advice.
Thanks,
Don

[Chris DeGerolamo]

Are you using 100% black as a fill color in Corel? If so, try 90% or 80%...

[Mark Sipes]

DITTO I use 80-70% black plus drop the frequency to 100-200..... gives more of a sandblasted look........

[Dan Hintz]

Too much fill would cause chipping on mine every time... I use 70% fill.

[Dave Sheldrake]

Don,

Sorry for the hijack, your sig says "Hurricane Floyd on route" does that mean a real storm or a laser machine?

What machine are you using to engrave the bottles? Generic Chinese or Western?

cheers

Dave

[Dan Hintz]

Looks like a Jamieson LG-640, Dave... 60W.

[David Somers]

Dave,

If Don is waiting for Hurricane Floyd thinking it is enroute, and his profile is correct showing him as being in Nebraska, I suspect he is safe for now. Floyd was a 1999 storm and appears to have dissipated some since it formed and hit the US mainland.

Or...there is an interesting tale regarding Don and/or his laser we can catch someday over a libation! <grin>

Dave

[Dave Sheldrake]

Cheers Dan,

Chinese HX derivative by the look of it.

Don try 450 speed and 40% power on a 60 watt, 60% at 300 seems high and will cause a lot of surface stresses.

Dave, there's quite a lot going on with Hurricane lasers and I was wondering if Don had one on order.

cheers

Dave

[Don Young]

Yes, I AM using the Jamieson for this. Received the Floyd but haven't started using it yet. I will try to slow it down and use less power as well lower the black fill to 70-80%. Thanks for all of the help. I will cross my fingers.
Don

[Daniel Wright]

Maybe Im missing something, but how do you set the fill to a percentage value?

[Chris DeGerolamo]

In Corel, you can select the level of black from the color docker or properties.

[Brian Robison]

Correct me if I'm wrong but the Chinese laser isn't going to recognize anything gray scale.
It only knows black or white. Yes there is a point in gray scale where is thinks it's either something
to engrave or not, but you don't get the kind of drivers that will dither the artwork.

[Bill Cunningham]

RubnBuff is your friend, and you can hide a million problems with it.. Also, I find there is a huge difference in the quality of glass used for wine bottles. Some etch quite nicely, others look bad no matter what you try. they are also mostly cast bottles, and as luck would have it, the etch will be right over the seam which only makes things worse.