Sheet of clear acrylic, frosted one side (back side). Painted with a few quick passes of a matte black paint + primer on the ‘glossy’ side. (Plain old Rustoleum brand crud.)
Wanted to experiment see if my idea of lasering off custom backlit panels for joystick and throttle bases would work.
Backlighting in this image is nonuniform of course, and definitely proves I need thicker paint than just one coat. But I think the engraving comes out very clean, even for the total outlined lettering vs. single stroke (AEGIS logo).
I was playing with some glass tile that was clear but had a silvery gray finish to the back. When I lasered from the back it burned off and etched the glass and was okay. Showed up fine when I held up to the light. Would work great if it was being backlit. However, when I tried lasering from the front through the glass (manually focused) to the back, the result was stunning.
Still need to play with settings. The power was too high/speed too slow so I ended up with some bubbling in some places.
I think on these tiles it had a layer of silver and then there was a thicker more rubbery coat. So it burned the silver away (or darkened)
I’d like to find more of these tiles in square to make coasters from. They just had rectangular in the close out section at Lowe’s.
If I was to try and replicate it with clear glass or acrylic I’d use silver paint (hammertone might be interesting) and then coat with black or gray paint. Depending on how that worked I might try a rubbery coating like a plastidip or plastikote (can’t remember what it’s called. Stuff people use to black out car chrome and emblems.)
If you’re just trying to etch acrylic (or glass), dry moly lube spray works great. Spray on a few coats. Laser and then wipe off the moly with alcohol.
When you focused to the back of the tile, did you remove the ‘hood’ screw-out part to let you get far enough down to minimize the spot at the back surface? I’ve found some glass tiles and wanted to try something similar (for now just plain monocolor backs not crinkly silver) but my focus height seems to be such that I don’t have the tile’s thickness available between the hood and the outer face of the glass.
I don’t use Lightburn. Luban does what I need.
Sometimes a little more prep work before importing graphics files to Luban.
A few more options and a better designed interface, but nothing as far as end result that Lightburn does that’s any better.
