Black Porcelain Tile

[Micheal Donnellan]

I am getting my laser in next week or two, now they found it after they misplaced it. I was looking at marble tiles in my area and supply is rubbish. The black must have been 30% heavy white streaks and they had no black granite.
They had on the other hand Absolute black Porcelain tiles that were a proper black. What is it like to laser a porceline tile, can it make much of a mark in it, any mark? If they can be engraved, has anyone done photos on it.

[James Jaragosky]

I am getting my laser in next week or two now they found it after they misplaced it. I was looking at marble tiles in my area and supply is rubbish. The black must have been 30% heavy white streaks and they had no black granite.
They had on the other hand Absolute black porcelain tiles that were a proper black. What is it like to laser a porcelain tile, can it make much of a mark in it, any mark? If they can be engraved, has anyone done photos on it.

One of the first things I tried my new laser on was black wall tile from the Borg. I didn't get it to engrave, but I did get some nice deep text into a piece using vectoring. It kind of melted the finish to a liquid state and re-hardened right away. It looked really good with my name in it. It even maintained its gloss finish.

[James Stokes]

Porceline tile does not work, You have the same color all the way through. You can kind of get a ghost image on it but that is all.

[Darryl Hazen]

I've done the 4x4 black tile and then applied gold "Rub & Buff" to the surface. The photo on the left is as lasered. Photo on right is with antique gold Rub&Buff.

4x4 Aztec Calendar 1.JPG 4x4 Aztec Calendar - R&B 1.JPG

[James Jaragosky]

I've done the 4x4 black tile and then applied gold "Rub & Buff" to the surface. The photo on the left is as lasered. Photo on right is with antique gold Rub&Buff.

4x4 Aztec Calendar 1.JPG 4x4 Aztec Calendar - R&B 1.JPG

standard borg tile?
what settings did you use?
really nice work.

[Darryl Hazen]

James,

The tile came from Lowes - standard bathroom tile. I'm not sure, since I did that quite a while ago, but I'm pretty sure I used the same settings called out for granite. On my laser that would be 600dpi, 30 speed/ 100 power. A word of caution, The gloss surface may cause bounce back. I would recommend dulling the surface or using wet newspaper on top. I didn't have a problem when I did these, but, the thought entered my mind that bounce back was a possibility.

[Micheal Donnellan]

The back is the same colour as the front a solid colour through the piece. will have a go at more regular tiles when the laser shows up once customs release it. Why is everything so slow in this country. any recommended setting for a 60W machine to do regular bathrom tile.

[David Hirschfield]

The back is the same colour as the front a solid colour through the piece. will have a go at more regular tiles when the laser shows up once customs release it. Why is everything so slow in this country. any recommended setting for a 60W machine to do regular bathrom tile.

I've had good results with a matte black spanish made tile. The key is to look on the back of the tile for evidence of the "undercoat" or underglaze. It should be white. If I recall, I used about 70 to 100 speed and 95% power. That's the speed setting on my Rabbit machine which goes upto about 600. The mark is white but I did find that acrylic white paint and a rubber squeegee brought the the image out. I've done murals this way with good results. I've sold the tiles with engraved pgotos for Euro 100 each and include an acrylic stand. It's a bit slow and the paint can be messy but I guessed you can do about 5 or 6 a day with Pshop work and tests etc. Not too bad really if you can generate the orders.

[Darren Null]

I've had good results with my 10W laser on dark coloured tiles, but you have to nuke tiles hard to dig into the glaze. I get good results on most tiles at 100 power, 2% speed (3mm plywood cutting setting for me is 100 power, 0.7 speed, just to give you an idea). It's sllllloooooooow, and therefore expensive.

Can you get this rub'n'buff stuff in europe? Sounds pretty good. I've been using 'water soluble acrylic paint' (it's water soluble until it dries- good but expensive), but could definitely use something that's easier to clean off for a perfect finish.

[Micheal Donnellan]

David any chance I could see some photos of your work and what size tiles are you using. No idea if you can get RubnBuff, don't remember seeing it around.