10 Laser Engraving Secrets EXPERTS Don't Want You to Know!

wedding season is almost here and custom engraved wine glasses are always a hot seller we're going to give you our top 10 tips for the perfect wine glass right now what is up welcome back do you like to do it build it or make it so do we and we have new videos each week we got an order for 36 wine glasses for a wedding and these are the ones we'll be doing and they have a pink coating on them so we had to do a little extra testing and that was a perfect opportunity to share with you the top 10 tips that we have for getting the perfect engraving on a wine glass tip number one use a rotary tool since it is a cylindrical item you're going to want to use a rotary tool so you get a nice consistent engraving across your entire design as the glass tapers if it doesn't rotate then you will get a different focal height as it moves across the curvature of the glass tip number two clean your glasses nobody likes a dirty glass and your laser doesn't either use an alcohol wipe some alcohol or even something like Dawn that will cut through the greasy fingerprints we found during our testing that our glass had some fingerprints on it and when we applied the coating it did not have an even coating across you could see it was level it was thicker in some places which impacted the engrave settings actually would separate around the fingerprint you could see it tip number three apply a temporary coating to the glass surface now your laser is not going to focus on the clear surface of the glass so you're going to need to apply something to the surface that the laser can heat up that will get hot enough that will create micr fractures in the surface of the glass making it look frosted now we've tried several different Coatings we and and all of these will work so you can use any of these we're just going to tell you the one that seem to work best for us and why so this is try the chalk spray mhm black chalk spray paint it worked okay it went on fine and engraved fine it just wasn't the best then we had white Tempa paint white tempera paint actually worked really well it was like a runner up yes it was definitely a runner up and then of course this is two different versions of black temperer paint now this one we got at Michaels and it was twice the price of what we found at Walmart so if you're looking for temper paint just go to Walmart and get it these little pouches come this was 8 O this was 3 oz but three of these was cheaper than one of these and we found this one just worked the best it worked better it coated a little bit better this one would flake off this one coated nice and even and it even accepted a second coat and this is krylon's shortcuts metallic paint so this is a little guy and this is a great spray paint it does keep a solid surface it goes on nice and smooth and when you clean it off it actually kind of gives a little Shimmer yes in the etched engraving so we really really liked this one the problem with this is if you're only doing a few we highly recommend this version but we're doing 36 and the cleanup time of this one was a lot longer it took a lot more scrubbing so well the juice wasn't worth the squeeze on this one it looked nice but it didn't look that much nicer than the black temper paint so our recommendation is this Walmart black temper paint and the cleanup on this stuff was a breeze it literally just ran it underneath the sink with the spray nozzle wash and it washed right away tip number four getting an even coat on the glass surface is nearly impossible once it's very clean and has no grease or Grime on it then trying to get a nice even coat is is very hard if you use a paintbrush it will leave streaks if you use a foam brush will streaks so what happens there is you'll get uneven engraving spots in your in your design because the paint is thicker in some places and thinner or just missing if you're using a paintbrush it will just be missing in some places missing or very thin you'll get a thin engrave at a thin Paint Spot so what we found works best is that we cut The Temper paint by 3 to one with water so it's three parts water to one part paint we put it in a little pump bottle and it and it sprays out fine it works great you want to give it what maybe 10 in or something you want enough distance so that it's spraying evenly you're starting to get that mist yes now this is great again if I'm doing I don't know 3 four 5 six but since I'm doing 36 I went ahead and picked up a $15 little pressure sprayer from Harbor Freight and uh this works great also a great job with misting and we do a bunch of them at one time and as long as I get the right consistency of my paint it'll go on pretty thick too I didn't I didn't have to thin it out too much tip number five use the chuck on your rotary tool we found that using the rollers laying the glass on the rollers even with the little support in the back the glass had a tendency to wobble or actually like roll it would do the wobble and roll and we weren't getting an even engrave across the surface of the glass so we found that using the Chuck will allow us to hold the wine stem like this and now you're getting a nice tight level surface and consistent every time it's not going to move as it rotates not going to wobble and walk if you're using a stemless wine glass this will work as well what you'll do is just put these little rollers inside of the wine glass there's you can actually just flip these little tongs well there's different feet so they have stepper feet so there you go and you'll put these on and basically these will hold your wine glass from the inside and again it's going to hold it nice and steady and it's pretty easy to switch out I know people are like oh I need to create a jig but really I loosen it I take the especially with the stemed ones I take it out I put it in I tighten it back up and move on it's so easy with the stems it's really pretty quick tip number six you need an accurate measurement of the circumference of your wine glass now if you can't remember which is the diameter and which is the circumference a great thing about xtools creative space it actually has a little diagram so you know which is which and the best way to do that measuring is with a soft tape measure these metal ones aren't going to work so well to do the circumference but if you can't find yours like I couldn't find mine during the testing Garrett's genius was here just use this right exactly where I want to be engraving I'm measured the circumference of the wine glass and then knew exactly what it was and put it up against the tape measure and I knew it was 11 in and I was like wow that's so smart so much easier genius yes tip number seven run a material test pattern not all glass is created equal not all temporary Coatings are created equal and not all lasers are created equal so to get your perfect setting for Engraving it's best to just run a test pattern so we did a bunch of these because we did one for every single surface coating that we used so the white temper paint the black temper paint uh which is this the chalk paint the metallic spray also tested both on the clear and the pink and they reacted differently on the pink glass than they did with the the clear glass this one yeah there was a spot that really it actually just shattered it cracked it g when I cleaned it I I broke it really broke it so this is our material test this is our material test card right here all right Kim picked it up tried to look at it and it fell apart tip number eight add 10% width to Circular logos or designs if your logo is a circle and you're engraving it on a curved surface like this as you look at the image it's going to give an optical illusion after it engraves as being an oval so you're going to want to add 10% and it's going to look funny on the screen before you engrave it but the illusion will be a perfect circle once it engraves you know it's like those uh mirrors at the circus yeah those fun housee mirrors those fun house mirrors the curvature of the glass kind of gives you that long skinny look and that's what happens when you engrave just a perfect circle on a tapered glass tip number nine make sure your laser engraved surface is level we talk about consistent burn throughout your design making sure you have the consistent focal height throughout your design while it's turning is crucial so not only left to right but also top to bottom you can see that we've put the level here and where we'll be engraving is actually level and that's because Garrett has mounted the rotary tool to a little jig that he created this is the ra2 pro rotary tool and EXO now has an accessory that will allow you to tilt the Chuck mechanism here so that you can get a level engraving but because we don't have that yet Garrett was able to mount this and now we have a level surface area well this jig is serving two purposes it butts right up against the side of the laser so that the glass will be in the same spot every time and it levels it up a little bit so all I have to do is loosen it put the new glass in tighten it double tap on start mm tap tap tip number 10 avoid bidirectional engraving when Eng engraving on glass now this is an optional tip you don't have to do it that way uh but and it will take a little bit longer if you engrave in One Direction only but it does give a little bit nicer look it leaves uh cleaner lines because it's just going in One Direction otherwise it's engraving in both directions and the lines get a little squiggly get a little overlap yeah and there's just a little bit uneven so if you have that extra time maybe you're not doing 36 glasses uh and you want a nice perfect engraving we recommend turning off by directional engraving those were our top 10 tips for Engraving the perfect wine glass what is your tip do you have a tip that we haven't mentioned today leave it in a comment down below I also love to hear from you what is your top selling wedding gift item if you're engraving or cutting what's your top selling gift share it with others down below so they can start marketing this season coming up in just a few months well I am about out of time I have 36 wine glasses to go engrave but a big thanks to all of our patrons we love you guys that is the best way to support this channel there's a great community over there and when you sign up for the made it or Master it here you get access to like 380 files just right off the bat and we will see you on test cut Tuesday and don't forget about studio session Sunday [Music] with optical illusions mhm