New Process

Hi folks,
Long time, no see! I've been slacking on my blogging. I'd rather be riding the Beta or the Honda.
We've started a new process (for us). We've been looking at it for a long time now.
The process is Dye Sublimation and I'm excited about it. It allows us to put a full color picture on different substrates. We've done a few mugs and several plaques. We've even done some of our neck medallions with a full color picture inside a 2 inch diameter.
Above is an example of a plaque we did.

Photo on Granite

Things have been really busy. SWMBO is working on the taxes and looking at new products for a good customer of ours. I may be the guy that runs the laser and draws the art work but Metal Markers could never survive without all the work my wonderful wife does. I know I try her patience on a daily basis but I really don't mean to!!!!
Well, back to the subject. A friend of mine requested I "rough up" a piece of granite with the laser to be able to attach a photo to it. I suggested we just put the photo on the granite. We got the photo and it was pretty rough. It was taken in 1861 so what can one expect? I worked on cleaning up the photo and a friend of mine from the UK offered to work on it also. He must have spent several hours on it and ran it through an engraving program called "Photograv". I ran the photo on the laser on a piece of absolute black granite but I wasn't 100% happy with the results. My buddy in the UK sent me several pictures he'd worked on and I picked out one I thought looked good. I tried it using 100% speed 100% power and 300dpi and was pleased with how the engraving turned out. I believe folks think that because we use a computer and a laser that any one can do this. I have no idea how many hours went into this project and we scrapped 3 pieces of 12 x 12 granite. Getting rich? I don't think so Tim.

Thinking INSIDE the box

Today I'm engraving glass horse heads for trophies. I take a horse head and make my fixture to hold the part stable, as level as possible and repeatable.
Then Murphy rears it's ugly head! The horse heads are not constant and the third one I go to engrave doesn't even fit in the fixture. Well it's head scratching time. I think I've come up with one solution, I'll hold the glass horse head in a box full of sand. This will allow me to adjust for placement and levelness. The next challenge is the actual engraving being in the best place. Because of the engraved part not being consistent, it's a tough thing to make the engraving fit each individual part. Now, here's the solution I come up with. I make a piece of acrylic the same size as my page size. I center my text and I cut a small hole exactly in the center. I place the acrylic in the best looking location for the text and make a dot on the glass using a Sharpie through the center hole in the acrylic. Now I use the red dot pointer to find my dot. I set this to my home position. I use the Epilog Center to Center engraving feature and viola! I use more power to make up for the uneven surface and pay close attention to focus. A 4" lens would be an advantage but we'll make do with a 2". Use a little denatured alcohol to take off the mark that the Sharpie made.

Cutting to Create

The laser can be used to cut some materials. We cut mirrored acrylic to make vanity plates for the front of vehicles. Colored acrylic is cut to inlay for the design. The front is held on to a back plate with an industrial strength pressure sensitive tape the covers the entire 6 x 12 size. The photos don't do justice to the product.

Laser Engraving Stainless Steel

This is why we named our company "Metal Markers". We decided to carve out our niche by engraving for commercial industries. Although we do a lot of metal marking, we've engraved just about everything we can think of from food to soap! Of course we do trophy brass, plastics, and wood too.

To mark stainless we use an expensive spray called Thermark. It allows a CO2 laser to mark on the stainless. It leaves a high contrast black mark that is basically a ceramic deposit. The only way to get the mark off is to grind it or machine it. Any part numbers or logo's can be done this way. Even photos can be engraved on stainless using this process.