I had been racking my head to find something to hand out to people instead of actual business cards to ensure that my business was memorable and showed a small sample of what I could do. I have been making coasters for many years using a variety of techniques and on a variety of different materials, from wood to acrylic to ceramic to Corian®. All of which have their advantages and disadvantages.
| Wood | – Cheap – Easy to use – Reasonable use of scrap material. |
– More time in prep – The final product can warp – Difficult to waterproof |
| Ceramic | – Very cheap as new material – Easy to come by – Reasonably rugged |
– Easy to break (as all ceramics are) |
| Acrylic | – Also, good use of scrap material – Looks very good – Difficult to break |
– Can be difficult to get. – Overall, more expensive even as scrap. – Can be difficult to work with depending on methods |
| Corian® (countertop material) |
– Fun to work with but takes practice – Really nice feel and rugged product in the end |
– Lots of prep work – Needs finished (routed) edging – Takes a lot of practice – Makes a mess of your laser as engraving causes a lot of dust. |
None of these are not really ideal for coasters as they are not an absorption type material like cork or sandstone, but as a simple handout, they would suffice.\
I have chosen to use ceramic based on the above and how incredibly inexpensive and available it is. A single box of 100 4.25” x 4.25” tiles is only $11 at the time of this document. That’s $0.11/tile.
Creating the jig
The easiest way to create multiple copies of the same (or nearly the same) item is to create a jig to hold the material in the same place on the laser time after time. This entirely eliminates the step of trying to center the image on each tile for every run.
The image above shows six 4.3” squares spaced across a 19” x 10” rectangle. The 19×10 is used as the approximate max cutting area of a Glowforge. There needs to be a reasonable right and left margin to support engraving at a reasonable speed. The faster the engrave the more margin will be necessary for the head to slow down between passes.
Ignore all dimensions when creating your design. The red outline is the “containing rectangle” for the design. When loaded by the Glowforge app, DO NOT MOVE IT!! This will give you a visual representation of the workable area of the the laser. The green squares represent the cut out areas for the tiles.
I made each square 4.3” to allow for easy placement of the tiles. Make certain that when you place them in the jig, they are pushed to the upper left of each square for consistency.
IMPORTANT! Once you upload the image to your Glowforge NEVER MOVE IT for any reason. I do not trust the camera for anything but a general idea of what I am about to cut/engrave.
Picking the image
You can engrave just about any image on your laser. For myself, I decided to purchase some cool designs from www.yreart.com. The prices are very reasonable, and the artwork is outstanding. I will use a low-res version of one of their products for the remainder of this document.
This image is designed to be both engraved and cut-out. There is a vector component that allows for cutting out the design after the engraving is complete. Obviously, this is not necessary for our purposes as a coaster so some slight modification will need to be made.
I use Corel Draw™ and Paint Shop Pro™ as my weapons of choice when doing graphic design. There are many others out there both free and commercial. I will try to keep terminology here generic, but it may lean a bit towards these programs. If you have questions, please reach out for help.
I find bringing the .pdf from the purchased file into my photo editor the most accurate and consistent. We do not need any kind of vector component and the transition from pdf into a photo editor usually eliminates these.
Painting the tile
The chosen tile needs to be painted whatever color you wish. I chose black, red and green for variety. This is entirely up to you. The paint I used was Rust-Oleum™ 2X Ultra Cover spray. This is somewhat rugged, inexpensive and easy to obtain. I highly recommend that you use flat or satin paint. The flatter the better as it dries the quickest and seems to adhere to the tile best. You can apply a gloss top-coat when completed for additional protection.
Engraving paint
The goal here is to color the tiles in whatever way you wish, then engrave-away the color to reveal the white glaze. I use red, green and black spray paint to achieve this. You can be more creative by combining these if you wish. The bottom line is that the coaster will be predominantly this color.
The settings I use for engraving paint on my Glowforge Pro are:
Speed: 2000
Full Power
Lines per Inch: 125
Negative the image
Since we are going to engrave away all the white areas, we need to turn the image into a negative. You cannot simply do this as you will end up with a black, square background and the image will not be engraved correctly.
Cut the background out of the image. This is a bit odd as it may appear not-there but is white. You need to remove (make transparent) the background. Then negative the image and save it as a .jpg. This will take the transparent background and make it white as we need it.
Do the engrave
Load up your laser and make your engravings. Mine took about ten minutes per tile. So, six at a time is an hour.
Do not trust the camera (Glowforge). When using jigs, you need to rely on the confidence that everything is EXACTLY where it needs to be. Do not try to move the image around to “better” align with the material. Even if it does not look quite perfect, if you placed the material in the jig, and the jig is exactly where it was when you cut it, you will be fine.
Protect it
Again, I am making these just as memorable hand-outs and “business cards”. They will get worn and can be scratched but they are pretty. To help protect against this wear, spray the final product with a lacquer or clear coat.
Final touches
Add a piece of adhesive 4×4 cork to the bottom of your tiles to complete the coasters. This helps give them a finished, professional look and protects the surface they sit on from scratching.
Stamp your card!
I purchased a handstamp from Staples with my business logo and web site address on it. I stamped the bottom (cork) of each tile with this information so people can find me and my other products!
Finally…
Good luck with your crafting! Fee free to provide any feedback or additional ideas to this or any articles on TheBlueThingy.com. Add your own articles to help the laser community grow and learn!