How to Laser engrave on Glass with Diode Laser

welcome to paw paws workshop in today's video we're going to be taking the 20 watt uh diode laser and engraving on glass that's right this is what we're going to be engraving today and i hope you can see that in the camera but that is just amazing there's a lot of detail in that and it's a very very simple process i think too many times people over complicate the process today i want to break it down for you and show you in detail exactly how you can do it so that you can be successful in your shop so let's get started the glass that i'm using is a four inch by six inch and it came out of some old picture frames that i had now these have been sitting around in the shop for quite a while and there's just a lot of dust on them so the first thing in the cleaning process i'm just using some windex to be able to clean off just the bulk of the dirt and dust and get them basically clean once that is done then i'll move over to the next step i want to make sure that there's no grease or oils of any kind so i'm going to use the denatured alcohol and clean the glass again and make sure that it is literally spotless on both sides now this denatured alcohol dries very quickly so i will be able to clean both of my pieces of glass now the idea behind this is i'm going to have one piece of glass as my baseline and i'm going to use spray paint for that one and i want to see how the paint dries and literally the color of it and how smooth it is the one that we're actually going to be engraving i'm going to be using tempra paint and with the tempur paint i'm going to try just rolling it on with a foam roller and that'll be the first test now the temper paint that i'm going to use is just some paint that i've had in the cabinet for a while and this is nothing special the spray paint is the rust-oleum flat black primer that i will use and we'll engrave this one later and all i'm going to do is just put it down on the board and then i'm just going to lightly spray it and you want a nice even coat and this technique is used an awful lot throughout the youtube videos and it's just make sure that you get an even coat now the one that i really want to test is using tempera paint now a lot of times people will thin this out they'll put it in airbrushes and really complicate the process i'm not doing that i'm taking my clean glass i'm making sure that it's dry it's spotless that there's no dust on it and i'm taking the tempura paint and again there's nothing special i happened to buy this actually quite some time ago and just hadn't used it so this is the full strength not diluted i'm just putting this down directly onto the glass and then i'm going to take a foam roller and roll this out so that way it'll be a nice even smooth coat and then i'm going to let it dry and we'll compare how smooth this one is compared to the one where we use the spray can so the spray is my baseline to be able to see if we can duplicate that process with the temper paint so here's the first result with just a foam roller this is not good you can see through it it's not fully covered and i am not going to attempt to engrave this so now i'm going to take the same temporal paint again and this time i'm just going to use a foam brush and i'm going to use basically the same process i'm just going to spread out some of the temper paint right onto the glass with a foam brush then i'm going to spread it out and i'm going to get this as even as i possibly can right away you notice a lot of brush strokes i'm going to get this as even as i possibly can but by coming back with this very light stroke to be able to try to smooth out those brush strokes and that is really about as good as i can get it right now it does not look good so let's see what happens once this completely dries the two samples now are completely dry and this first one this is the tempera paint and you can look at that and you can actually see a couple of brush lines in there so we're going to see if that affects the engraving at all and then this second one is from the spray can where i sprayed it black looking and i don't know if you're going to be able to see this in the camera or not but if i really had to pick one that was darker or lighter i would have to say that the tempera paint is slightly darker but for the most part the texture is for it being perfectly smooth looks very good so i've got the sample ready it's smooth it's dry and it's nice and black so now let's get light burn going and i want to be able to just pull in a project that i had designed for this and it's going to be a compass rose i'll pick this simply because it had a lot of detail very fine lines very small it has both some large text as well as some very small text i typed in the word find your way just to be able to have a larger text i want to be able to have a good overall idea of how well this is going to engrave now this is still small it's about almost four inches by roughly two inches and on a piece of glass that's four inches by six inches that'll be fine the speed everybody needs to know the speed this is going to be done at 30 inches per minute with 60 percent power and that's a lot lower power than most people use that i have seen i do have the air assist i am using the over scanning for two and a half percent lines per inch about 253 so from there we're just going to hit ok so that way you have all the settings that i'm using now this is the fox alien riser 20 watt laser now i typically use the center point for my origin so i'm going ahead and framing this so i know exactly where this is going to engrave because i did not change that origin point so i know that it's going to engrave and it's going to fit where i want it to now one mistake that i made i forgot to set the z height so instead of being 30 millimeters high this was about 50 millimeters high and it did not even engrave through the paint so i went back and did the exact same engraving again and this is the results it's perfect it was able to remove the paint and with the 30 inches per minute and the 60 percent power you really don't need any more now i'm going to go ahead and take this over to the sink and get it washed up and let's look at it i think the results of this are fantastic that first engraving where i did it where it was not focused it barely made a dent it did not even remove the paint that was my fault so i did not change the setting initially i was going to increase the power and i said no way that's not necessary because it did not burn through the paint so 30 inches per minute 60 power worked extremely well the other thing i want to point out is that this was with the paint side up because that was what you're actually doing is burning through the paint etching the glass and that paint is there to be able to have it where the laser can see because otherwise the laser would go directly through the glass and not do anything at all well there you have it a very simple process to be able to engrave on the glass using the 20 watt diode laser and people say it can't be done yeah so to recap the steps clean the glass get that glass as clean as you can use temper paint is cheap you don't need to have it sprayed and then use the brush make sure that it completely covers let it dry completely it will dry smooth if there's a couple of little brush marks in there not a big deal and then as far as the power you don't need a lot of power slow that laser down to about 30 inches per minute keep the power at around 60 percent and you'll be able to engrave it you know the whole idea is it's burning away the paint and then it's etching that glass so it's a very easy process and you can use this on the picture frames any type of glass that you want to be able to do this with and if you have the rotary roller then you can use this same technique on glassware as also so if you liked the video today please go ahead and hit that little like button down there and please while you're there subscribe and hit the notification bell also i'm going to be doing some more work with the glass and being able to grave on that and i'm also going to do some with the acrylic a little different technique but it's still pretty darn easy so until next time i look forward to seeing each and every one of you in the shop on whatever project that i'm working on thanks for watching

Channel: Paw Paw’s WorkShop

Views: 240,472

Keywords: inventables, Easel, how to, create, torched flag, CNC for beginners, DIY, april wilkerson, i like to make stuff, steve ramsey, izzy swan, dude perfect, the king of ramdon, 5 minute craft, build something, socket storage, shop orgnization, inkscape, pen turners, Beginner woodworking, jig saw basics, EDC, cabinet building, laser for CNC, wine rack, tiling on the XCarve, Ninja Turtles, shop upgrade blast gates, Electrical circuit, micro and relay switch, Fox Alien

Id: mZtpByeJpKo

Length: 10min 13sec (613 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 22 2021