Three methods of engraving baseballs

all right guys welcome back to the shack tonight I'm out here working on a project and I had a guy message me this was a project that I wasn't sure if I could do so I'm having to do a little testing and it's something that I do want to add to my list of items that I can offer uh both here in the shack as well as maybe at events uh probably more towards here at the shack because it does involve a rotary so if you've ever asked yourself the question can you engrave a baseball and what way would you go about doing it that's what we're going to be covering tonight I'm having to do some testing I've been in here I've done went through a few of them guys trying to figure out the best way but I'm gonna go over some of the things that I've learned about engraving baseballs that are problematic and discuss that and then some of the approaches that I'm taking to try to counteract that and the results that I'm coming up with so if that's something you're interested in stick around and we'll be right back [Music] thank you all right guys so as I've always told you when you get ready to engrave something be prepared to have sacrificial pieces uh so far I have messed up three baseballs attempting to get this dialed in right and I expected to do that I bought a bucket of like seven or eight so that was the whole plan is I don't want to turn out something until I've tested every possible scenario to try to get the best results that I can and just to let you guys know it's been a rough start uh I've had to I've had to change some things but before we get into this I want to point out to you as always guys anytime you're engraving anything that you don't know exactly what is in it please use an enclosure proper ventilation take safety precautions and or either just don't do it okay what I do in my shop sometimes may not be the best ideas so don't do don't do what I do all right take care of yourself but I am using the enclosure everything I'm doing is inside the enclosure has been elated so all you guys that may be concerned about it I'm good been out here for a couple of hours hammering away at these things trying to come up with the way to do it to make it look good and the problem that I'm finding is these white balls they like to Scorch all right guys I'm going to show you this is a this is if if you engrave one of these guys without masking it or without doing anything uh this is the kind of this is the kind of problem I'm having you get a lot of yellowing and guys it's not just me okay I went on Etsy I've looked at some of the pictures people offering these in grade balls it's not just me that's a real problem okay so to combat that I've been trying a couple different things I have tried the old approach of wrapping them up in painters tape which you know masking them and it's somewhat effective the problem that I'm having with masking and I'll show you on this one right here is that if there are any creases in the mask and guys this is a round object so there's going to be some creases unless you are a lot better at masking round objects than I am this is what you end up with and you can see those little those little lines of burn there that is the creases that formed in the masking and I took time to try to get them all out but you can't because this is not a flat object and you're using flat tape so that approach not exactly ideal it it was better better than none without with doing it without anything but still not ideal so then it dawned on me I needed something that could conform to the round shape I needed something that would protect the white and keep the uh the scorching from happening and so I decided to try Sir Mark that's the only thing in the shop that I have that other than just using regular paint and I guys you can do the same thing with the Chalk Paints and some of the other Paints the water soluble paint I've got some of that back on the Shelf but to me that stuff I can't get an even coat with it if you have an airbrush kit maybe maybe that might work for you so but so I tried decided to try that and I got a lot better results still got a little scorching right there in the bottom but I think that is because I didn't have it coated well enough so that's where we're at right now so I'm kind of digging the Sir Mark approach so far so we're going to go through the steps I'm going to show you how I'm doing this and I've got the atom stack a30 over here uh got it fired up that's what I'm gonna be doing for this job got the Adam stack Rotary on there so we're gonna get that thing fired up and try to turn some of these out just show you the different processes and how it looks uh like I said I bought a whole bucket of balls to test and I destroyed a couple I mean when I say destroyed guys I have I have marked these things everywhere possible to try to to try to work it out and get it to where uh it's like I want it now I do kind of like this one up first is nothing at all all right I will tell you one thing that I have learned about putting something on these guys uh the if you engrave them by themselves there's some type of chemical there's some type of combustible inside here you will see some little small flashes of like miniature explosions in the work area just gonna Fair warn you that's why I say keep enclosed plenty of airflow so this is going to be a bit of a noisy video but Safety First guys [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] all right guys so that's the three techniques that I decided to use tonight and I'm going to get these things cleaned up and kind of show you what they look like so we've got the plane the wrapped and the sir marks let me grab a rag now to keep things fair I'm just going to use the rubbing alcohol to clean these things up that seems to do a pretty good job on getting the sticky stuff from the coating as well as getting a lot of the staining off depending on the look that you're wanting to go for with your balls uh you like I said without anything doesn't look bad it does tend to have a lot more Char and it appears but it's not terrible so as long as the charred look is something that the customer that you have is good with then I think that would probably be the easiest way to go about doing these things it would it would make the cleanup easier as well as it's not a bad looking burn so I've just about got it as clean as it's going to get guys so this is what uh this is what the end result looks like this is nothing on the ball whatsoever you can see there there there's some there's some yellowing right there around the text but for the most part it doesn't look bad okay so that's plain just remember what that looked like guys all right the next one I'm going to do is I'm going to peel this guy okay this is the one that we use I use the green uh painters tape to try to keep down the scorching and to protect the ball and hopefully make the cleanup a little bit better so I'm going to peel this stuff off and as you can see there's a little bit of weeding that you have to do because some of the letters are going to leave those little small paint pieces where you know it gets cut but it ends up leading it leaving it on there so you're going to want to take care to get those out and try to make sure you don't leave those green pieces on there as well as the logo you can see the logo it's it's currently a green logo but there's a lot of fine text on there so you just kind of scrape that out you can use a tool if you want I have found that if I just kind of rub it I can get under the edge and get it to come off now immediately following the removal of the green tape this is what I end up with the one thing that I can say about the wrapping is wrapping them is very effective if you can get it to where you don't have any of those creases anywhere that you're going to engrave I think it's possibly the best approach as far as economically speaking now it does a good job the cleanup with rubbing alcohol with this green tape is relatively easy so I'm going to get this thing wiped down and show you how it looks and this is what you get so right there as you can see guys I did a really good job apparently of getting all the creases out didn't get a whole lot of scorching on the ball but if you roll around to the text look right there at the bottom of the S and a few of those places a few of those places where the the masking didn't quite hold I did get a little bit of a little bit of Browning or just staining and I have tried guys this stuff you can scrub and scrub and scrub and it does not want to come off so that's the pitfalls of doing it this way but if that is acceptable as far as your customer is concerned if that is acceptable if they want it to look branded so to speak then that might be a plus I mean you may not want to put nothing on them because like I said the bear ball didn't do bad it didn't do bad at all guys I'm gonna put this one next to the bare one right now oh so these are the two these are the two that I did okay this is uh of course you can tell which one was masked and which one was not okay the this one here was masked this one had nothing so depending on the look that you're going for guys you you may not want a mask you may just want to take your chances and go for it but you can see the text both of them probably got about the same amount of distortion and darkening so I'm gonna set these over here and grab up our final contestant all right so this was my experiment guys Sarah coated ball or Sarah Mark Ball all right and In fairness even though this will come off with water I don't really want to soak my my baseball in water I'll be using rubbing alcohol to clean this guy as well now baseballs are made to be out in the weather so I don't think cleaning them in a sink would be a bad idea it would probably be a little more effective than trying to clean it with my rubbing alcohol but I'm going to try to rub it down and get most of this stuff off of it that I can with this rag but we'll be right back all right guys note Sir Mark comes off better with water than it does with alcohol just throwing that out there so I had to break down and go outside and use the hose to get the Sir Mark off of it and I realized too that while I was recording I did not properly line this one up but I'm going to show you this is what this one looks like this is the Sir Mark Ball I took all the Sarah mark off of it and wiped it down really really good under the water hose and then took a dry rack and dried it to try to get as much of the Sarah Mark if there's any left on there off of it as I could so here we are that's the Sir Mark Ball guys and no scorching whatsoever it is a little dark around the edges uh but I'm gonna say that's probably because I didn't get all the Sir Mark out and there's the the the logo so I'm gonna get the plane ball and compare the two so this is plain uh this one's the playing ball with nothing on it versus Sir Mark all right so depending on the look you want to go for with your text and the how much Scorch is acceptable for you then that's your options guys you got three options you can just go with it and own The Scorch uh you can use the mask which is probably the most economical but it is uh it is a little tricky you've got to make sure you get all those wrinkles out of there because if those wrinkles are in there that gas is going to get caught in those wrinkles and it is going to put those stained streaks on your material now one way to combat that I'm using the wider green tape so you only use enough green tape to cover exactly where you're going to engrave if you're doing text that's simple enough that's easy enough so I would say probably that would be the best approach all around because the Sarah Mark does create an issue with trying to get it off to try to get the you know all of the black off of it Sir Mark is a lot more expensive than the green tape so economically speaking I'm thinking the green tape is going to be the uh the way to go on these if you're going to do those that would probably be my recommendation like I said Sarah Mark does work if you had that idea and you wanted to try it but all things considered the cleanup's not that bad with the green tape as long as you have some rubbing alcohol or some type of sticker remover I stick with alcohol because it evaporates and it doesn't leave it odor but as long as the cleanup doesn't bother you the the the tape seems to be the go-to for now guys so just to kind of reiterate what I'm saying as you can see the balls when you put the tape on there if if you can press it in and get it as smooth and get all of those bubbles out wherever you're going to engrave and try to get all those lines out maybe even try using a squeegee or something if you can get that completely on there so there's no air gaps this seems to be the best approach uh to speak of now so if you're trying to do multiple lines of text probably that's one of those times that you would want to try to break out the Sir Mark or other you know water-based paint and try that approach but play around with it and see what you think figure out what works best for you and I hope if nothing else guys I hope this kind of saves you a little time if you do decide you want to get into these things I have had a lot of people asking me can I do these so I want to try it out but as always guys use ventilation maintain safety you never know what's in these things okay so make sure to be as safe as you can with it but have fun all right guys that's going to conclude the video for tonight like I said just wanted to bring you guys along for my testing while I was doing this good news is I got all the testing done to get my settings I managed to sacrifice three of the balls for you guys and I still have two left so until next time guys be safe have a good day foreign [Music]

Channel: The Clack Shack

Views: 5,043

Keywords: diy, xtool d1 10 watt, xtool laser engraver, woodmizer lx25, woodmizer, woodworking, laser cutting, laser engraving, how to, diy home decor, ortur LM3, Comgow laser engraver, Lightburn tutorial, lightburn tips, Atomstack laser, Monport CO2, Atezr P20, Atomstack, engraving baseballs, baseball engraving

Id: SvTMEkc0VHY

Length: 16min 12sec (972 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 22 2023