Laser signature pen

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btboone

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Here's a pen I did today with the same technique as I used on the wood puzzle pen. This one is acrylic. I took a digital picture of my wife's signature and enhanced it for use on the laser. I also added the decreasing pitch crossed lines for a little flair. The laser engraving was filled with CA mixed with a couple drops of amber dye and some white pearl powder. It looks pretty nice. On future ones, it would do a little better to have the signature done with a thicker line so that it shows up a little better. Overall, I was pleased for the first attempt. Her favorite color is purple. Can you tell?

2005211224139_signaturepen.jpg
 
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melogic

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Now that's a class act. I really like everything about it. I agree that the signature could be a bit bigger, but it looks fantastic as it is.
 

DCBluesman

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That's very slick! Increasing the line thickness would assuredly let the fill show better. Clever idea and excellent execution!
 

btboone

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The engraving worked fine on the acrylic as it was. It didn't contrast much, but the lines were very readable. I did want to try out the CA technique to see if it worked. I also tried engraving on one of my cast polyester parts as a prototype and saw that those lines were even sharper. That's because the polyester is a thermoset, while the acrylic is a thermoplastic and remelts.

I need to start engraving some hammerhead sharks to keep up with Jim Lambert. [:D]
 

btboone

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Thanks guys. [:)]
Alice, the one I saw on e-bay had a Buy It Now, so this particular one should not get that high. Their usual cost is around $8000 to $10,000 for a 25 watt one. It takes more power (or just slower speed) to do raster stuff like the signature than the lines. The carriage goes back and forth like a dot matrix printer in this mode. The signature was done at 50% power (around 68 watts) and 60% speed. I prototyped the lines (which are vectors drawn in CAD) on a polyester pen and used 50% power and cooked the heck out of it! It was way too hot because they were vectors. I went down to the brass tube and it bubbled and boiled and stunk up the shop. I backed off to 20% (27 watts) and it was still pretty aggressive in the acrylic. The laser is so repeatable that in order to get inreased depth, it's better to simply run the program again than turn up the power. The surrounding areas don't heat up as much.

Tom, that's the pinecone look on the crossed grooves I was describing the other day for your pens. There should be ways to use hot wires, files, Dremel tools, or other clever means to get some designs on a pen in a similar manner without the need for the laser. I might try my hand at sandblasting to see how well that works.
 
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