Still working on finding the best settings for tiles to get the darkest colors, but here’s 2 that didn’t get tossed trash!
I’m headed out to the shop to see what happens with the Norton White Tile Method on stainless steel…
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I’ve done a few tiles. Still don’t get them right every time. What I’ve been figuring out is that the longer the paint dries, the faster you can go. I’m sure humidity and temperature also has an effect.
So I paint 6 or so at the same time and then sacrifice one for a material test to find the best black and then use those settings for the tiles I do that day.
Be sure to post the results of the stainless steel! That would be cool if it works.
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Wow! You have some great results there! If you don’t mind me asking what strength is your diode and what are your laser max’s and speeds typically? Are you using Jarvis as your halftone method? I’m using an 80W effect (10W actual) diode. I’ve been trying to run 1200-1500 mm/s with a max power of 85%.
I think I’m going to try white spray paint again. Lately I’ve been focused on using a slurry of TiO2 mixed with denatured alcohol from the hardware store. I brush it on with a paint sponge and it only takes about 3 minutes for the alcohol to evap. It leaves a chalky coating on the tile that rinses off with water. You have to be careful when handling because it’ll rub off with your fingers. Here’s a link to the TiO2 I bought on Amazon, TiO2 Powder. A little bit goes a long way.
So the stainless steel with TiO2 was a bust.
Looked like it was going to work, but when I rinsed it off there was almost no adhesion of the TiO2 to the SS. I did find some other powder products online that are specially blended for marking SS.
However, I did try blue iron oxide, Blue Iron Oxide Powder made into a slurry with DN alcohol on SS using the same settings as I would for a ceramic tile using the Norton method. I don’t have a picture but there was some blue adhesion to the SS it the black areas. I’m going to try it again with slower speeds and more laser. I’ll post pictures later.
I’m moving to foam cutting this week and hopefully wood next week or 2. I need to understand the pros and cons of a single flute versus the 4 flute end mills that I currently have on hand.
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For things that I want to be black and white with no gray, I find Rust-oleum Cold Galvanizing Compound works better than white paint. I’ll engrave the image using Threshold.
Thanks Robert!
I have some Rustoleum CGC from a HAM radio antenna I built for friend!
I have this Jtech Photonics 7W pro
Best laser upgrade for engraving (jtechphotonics.com)
If the paint has a day to dry, i’m running at 1333 mm/s at 65% power. 2 days and its 1,500 mm/s and 85% power. I had some tiles that were painted more than a month ago and was able to go 2,000 mm/s and high power (95% maybe?)
If you’re using lightburn for the engravings, there’s a “material test” under the tool menu that spits out gcode for the range of speeds and powers that you set. Its very handy for finding the right settings.
There’s been some other posts on trying to apply TiO2 powder and a lot of them came out pretty blotchy. Are you seeing the same? not sure if the white spots in the background were intentional or not.
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Are you referring to the crown? No, that was not intended! I expected that to be a deeper black. I’m going to try spray paint again and Rustoleum CGC.
However I did get an interesting result earlier today with blue iron oxide on ceramic tile.
It gave kind of an antique look. Looking at it close though I don’t think it’d lend well to a grayscale image, more apt for line-art.
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This thread mentions a lot of issues with blotching and inconsistent application when not using spray paint. I was wondering if you were getting the same issues with the your denatured and sponge method.
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I have sone oretty blotchy results, but I think I can blame them on a Dollar store spray bottle that doesn’t produce a good spray. I think it’s also too heavy when it looks even, might be a large part of my problem.
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You know how laser printing toner is black oxide - Has anyone tried printing a full square of black, sticking it toner side down to a tile and lasering?
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