Gemini Duets-- thumbs up!

[Kev Williams]

I picked up some red/white and some white/black. Was pleasantly surprised at the price.

I liked how they engraved, the white seeemed to need a bit less power than RM. The red engraved nice, but it was small text so jury is still out on the red-stain thing, but these didn't. Also, I cut the reds out with a cutter tool, cut nicely, no meltdowns or anything.

The VERY nice surprise, was how smooth the top edge of the white was after laser cutting, NO raised 'mushroom' edge at all. I did mask it with transfer tape, but I pretty much always do that. But this cut so well that I'm going to experiment with no masking.
cutedge.jpg

Alas, I still got the same black sticky gooey edges, I guess that's never going away -

I'm pretty impressed so far, and I love the price- at the rate I've been buying RM lately, this stuff will save me near $300 a month... And I can get it at the same place! Bonus!

[Darren Wilson]

Hi Kev,
I like the Duets as well, I find the red does not have as much of the bleed through as well.
If you get a chance try to get a hold of Trotec's Trolase, it seems to be very similar to the Gemini Duets, leaves dusty residue rather than sooty, and is a bit less expensive, at least here in AU.

[David Somers]

Kev,

Are you able to clean the black sooty gooey edges? How are you dealing with it? Or are you just having to live with it? Just curious.

Dave

[Kev Williams]

Alcohol, turpentine, mineral spirits, naphtha, any will clean the goo, none are perfect but my favorite is turpentine. My gripe is that there's so much goo that you can't clean 2 edges with the same place on the rag or paper towel, and most times getting a good clean takes 2 or 3 cleanoff runs...

This isn't a brand name thing, it's an extruded-acrylic thing. ANY extruded acrylic will leave goo behind when cut with a laser. The only exception is if you have time and patience to make many fast vector passes (like 8 or more) to cut thru 1/16" worth of material. And even there's still goo, just lots less of it.

[Brett Winston]

I picked up some red/white and some white/black....
Alas, I still got the same black sticky gooey edges, I guess that's never going away

Kev, (or anyone) have you managed to figure out how to get a clean mark on this line of plastics? I find that if I make VERY light passes on the Contours (thinnest) material I get a nice mark but it's shallow and needs the top coat color cleaned out a bit from the bottom (when white) but when engraving the XT which is the thicker material I get the gooey edges of which you speak and cleanup takes forever. I'm really wasting too much time on cleanup of my tags.

[Mike Null]

I use IPI exclusively and dna to clean the edges. Works pretty well. I also bevel edges before cleaning if the job calls for bevels.

[Chris DeGerolamo]

If your designs allow (i.e. 90 degree corners, no radius), try a high speed vector pass to score the material and just snap them apart. This has saved me tons and tons of laser time, edge clean up, and headache when engraving red over white plastic.

[Kev Williams]

^^ oh yeah!

Brett- all I've used so far is the Duets, in red/white and white/black. I've found the white takes less power than Rowmark's white, and the black engraving is much blacker. Rowmark's always looks dark brown to me. I've only used a little of the red, and the engraving I did was all of some 1/8" high lettering, looked good but no clue how large engraved areas will fare compared to Rowmark, which can be a white-is-now-pink nightmare sometimes...