I mounted the roller onto an 8 mm threaded rod with some spacers and washers, and then painted it with a thick coat of matte black paint (not sure if it matters, just had black laying around). Mounted it into the rotary axis chuck, and engraved the paint off, where I wanted the design etched.

After engraving, there is a residue of burned paint left behind, which needs to be cleaned off. Even though the first engraving went well, the coat of paint wasn’t thick enough or dry enough, and when I tried cleaning the residue off with some rubbing alcohol, it smudged and came off. So I cleaned it all off, applied two thick coats of paint, and left it dry overnight.

The next day I tried again and this is what it looked like:

Much more awesome. Etching went about the same, I just exchanged the power supply with a PC PSU and used the 5v line to decrease the amount of pitting and get a smoother etched surface. Also, I used a round piece of copper plate as a negative pole to get a more uniform etch around the part. After an hour of etching this was what I got:

I’ve since sent it to the customer for testing on leather and I’m looking forward to seeing some stamped leather!

Thanks for reading!

The post Electro-etching steel. Part two appeared first on G00.

It worked fine on these. I also marked my own Swiss Army Knife. The good news is, it worked. The bad news is, I chose a predominantly etched design, meaning that the laser had a lot of time to heat the blade up. This being the smaller type of knife, the blade is quite thin. Of course it warped… It does look good though.

Another thing to be mentioned is that this marking does not work on chromed or nickel plated surfaces. Tried it on a Zippo lighter and it left only the faintest mark. It may be because the plated surface isn’t porous enough.

Here’s a gif (horrible, horrible quality) of the action:

The post Laser Marking Steel – Part Two appeared first on G00.