Confused about how to use laser with real items (wallets, iPhone cases, etc)

Thanks again for the tips - I was overthinking it but you steered me right! The tutorial file worked well and I even added my puppy’s picture (albeit upside down when assembled) but it was really cool.

I’m now trying tile spray painted with black paint - so far it seems to need 100% power to burn through the paint, but I’ll see how it goes (settings: dot, 7 dot/mm, work speed 1500 mm/min, 4 ms/dot) - 50% power didn’t seem to do anything so I bumped to 100% manually and so far I can see something forming.

I noticed Luban is restricting the engraved image to 125 mm x 125 mm - on my A350? Why is it limiting the size? I’m trying to make it 6" x 6" (152x152 mm) - the gcode preview shows the whole image and the boundary check covered the full perimeter of the tile, and the tile does look like it’s engraving the full size so far. Is the tooltip simply wrong?

(above edited: at first it looked like it wasn’t burning the full size but now it is)

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There’s a bug in Luban that gives the 125x125 warning but it should still let you make it larger. At least that’s what happened to someone else on one of these threads and to me on the last thing I tried. But it still let me process and preview and make g-code.

Anything I’ve done with paint or sharpie or another coating like dry moly lube I run at 100%.
You might want to try slowing down to 800mm/min and upping to 5 ms/dot. Set the dot/mm to max which I believe is 10 (20?) Usually something like that only seems to work with vector or B&W - higher contrast images. But always try before you assume that. I created some coasters on slate that turned out beautifully with greyscale.

-S

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Those are beautiful! Did you do anything to the slate coaster before burning or is that straight off the machine? Were the settings as you quoted above? I definitely want to give this a try!

Nothing prior to burning.
Slate can run surprisingly fast. I can’t remember if I was at 1500 or 2000 and 4ms/dot. Jog speed at 3000.
Coated with mineral oil afterwards - darkens black and causes white to pop and brings out detail.
Before adding oil:

-S

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Have you tried the Nixon methods to etch white tiles to be indelible to scratching off, etc? Curious if our lasers are powerful enough. It involves coating a white tile with some flat white paint, then burning with the laser, and at the end removing the paint with acetone, etc - this leaves a dark etched image burned into the tile’s surface.

Here’s my first ever tile burn with the settings above, with a white tile coated with black paint. My issue is the paint will scratch off easily, although I did apply a clear varnish topcoat but it’s still delicate. I inverted the image to a negative to have the laser burn the black off, revealing the white below. I’m pretty happy with it as a very first go although I wonder if it’ll be brighter with your settings.

I just downloaded Lightburn and I’m playing with it to see if it will do a better job especially if I try to make my own half tone dithered images, although this too is a big jump considering I’ve never done this before!

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I assume you read the other thread that gets into dithering and Lightburn?

Haven’t tried painting tiles.
I was going to suggest giving it a clear coat, but then saw you already did that.
I have used dry moly lube (and sharpie) to etch glass.


I’ve also tried using the laser by itself on clear glass tiles that had a silvery surface on the back. From behind it turned okay, and looks good when held up to the light (maybe for a lamp or candle
surround?) But then when I focused through the glass to the back side it turned out amazing! (just need to find some square tiles like this)(a little less power would be good too, started to bubble a little)



I wonder what would happen if you painted it with a ceramic paint/glaze like you would fire in a kiln? Not sure if temps get high enough. Would be interesting to try. Maybe next time I’m at Hobby Lobby I’ll check and see if they have anything like that. The other thing that would be interesting to try would be a powder coat. That’s basically a baked on finish.

-S

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Snapmaker showed this method used on a ceramic mug and it worked… It looked like they used black dry erase marker rather then paint though, because they simply wiped it off at the end of the video.

I tried using moly to mark some container lids for my wife. (Not sure if she’s going to fill them with soup or hot cocoa fixings.) Moly didn’t work but then I tried spray paint and that worked great:



Just had to wipe off a little residue with alcohol.
Need to be a little more careful with my masking, (it was a test) but happy with how it turned out.
-S

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Those lids look great! Can you clarify if the green background is the color you painted and the laser removed the ink? What laser settings did you use?

Green is paint.
It was 100% at 400mm/m (I believe). Wanted to make sure but I bet I could run it at 1600 and still be fine.

-S

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Thanks to the help from users on this thread. I spent the last few days learning about tile burning and made a step by step posting on what I’ve done (I changed to Lightburn software rather than Luban): hopefully this helps others. I’m definitely still learning and barely know what I’m doing in Lightburn.

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wow! That’s gret result!
So, you’ve just paint the surface with a green paint? Passing with the laser you get white color? I was supposed to get the original color before the green paint… mmmmhh

Paint was completely removed. It’s the silver of the lid shining through. Just looks white in photo.
-S

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Does anyone have a link to this video? I can’t find it on Snapmaker’s YouTube channel.

Check the kikstarter campaign page

I belive it was part of a add about the rotary module there.

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My questions:

  1. I’m confused about what is the relevance of the “material thickness” setting - do you set it to 0.8 cm for an iPhone case, or 20 cm for a wooden box? Or is the material thickness meant to adjust for cutting through the material?

Material Thickness + Focus Length = Height SM2 will set laser above platform
If you have placed a safety sheet under the object to protect the platform, then you would add that to the material thickness number you put into Luban.
Yes set the thickness for different objects as you use them in Luban.
There is bound to be a certain amount of burn in depth on a pass of the laser. Repeat the number of passes and eventually you cut through the material. Hence 4mm cardboard is 3 passes for the 1600mW laser.
For those that want to be specific and are measuring the distance the laser head is off from the object, the lense is a little way up inside the shroud.

  1. Do I manually set z-height with the laser head touching the object, or do I need to move it up a bit for an offset (and where do I get that value? - I did see Laser Focus 23mm on my Luban software when connected).

That was just for initial calculation of focus length. That does not change again.
Yes the manual says touching object, video shows a piece of paper underneath for seperation. But again this is just for the initial determination of the focus length. As long as you put the material thickness in for each job the SM2 works out the z-height.

  1. Is the origin different when using manual file load (eg work origin centered) vs image capture (work origin like 3D printing 0,0 at the front left edge)?

Yes, unless you have coincidentally set them to be the same. They are 2 different methods to achieve the same thing. Don’t start trying to combine them. But with the image capture work origin becomes irrelavant. -You just overlay your file/image over the top of the SM2 image capture.

  1. Does image capture require it to be sent via wifi to the snapmaker? If I’m using image capture, how do I set the Snapmaker to the right z-height for the object to be engraved?

Yes.
Put the material thickness in Luban.

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Dear sdj544
your glass etching is amazing. How did you get this result?
I don’t know dry moly lube. What steps and settings are necessary?

Regards
Smae

Thanks! It’s always fun to try new stuff and push boundaries of what people think possible.
https://smile.amazon.com/CRC-03084-Lubricant-Aerosol-Spray/dp/B0013J62P4/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2QD706L97FQ30&dchild=1&keywords=dry+moly+lube+spray&qid=1609444533&sprefix=dry+moly+%2Caps%2C220&sr=8-2
Spray on a nice even coat (mask anything you don’t want it on), let dry for 15-30 minutes, repeat.
Laser @ 100% power and 200mm/m (may have been 400mm/m)
Use IPA to remove excess lube.
Works to mark stainless steel also.

-S

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Dear sdj544

Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately I don’t find anybody selling Dry Moly Lube here in Europe.
I will try to find again.

Many thanks
Smae

Might be under a different brand or name but the equivalent is definitely is available in the EU.
You can also use sharpie or black dry erase marker.

-S