Laser engraving: what the beam actually does
Engraving, etching, ablation and annealing are four different things a laser does to a surface. Which one you get depends on the wavelength, the power …
Techniques
How a mark is actually made: laser, rotary, hand engraving and abrasive blasting, and what each one does to the surface it touches.
Four families of process cover almost everything that gets called “engraving”. They are not interchangeable. Each one damages the surface in a different way, and the way the surface is damaged decides how the mark looks, how long it survives and what it costs in time.
- Cutting with a spinning tool — rotary engraving, the descendant of the pantograph. Real depth, real chips, works on almost any solid.
- Cutting with a hand-pushed tool — hand engraving, the original. Slow, unrepeatable, and the only one that gives a bright cut.
- Cutting with light — laser engraving and its shallower relatives, and specifically laser marking on metal, where nothing is removed at all.
- Cutting with grit — sandblasting glass, which is less a cut than a controlled erosion.
The pages here describe process. What the process is being done to matters just as much — that is materials.
Rotary and diamond drag engraving
The mechanical processes: a spinning cutter that removes a chip, and a non-rotating diamond that ploughs a line. Different tools, different marks, …
Hand engraving and the graver
The oldest of the processes, and the only one that produces a bright cut. What a graver is, how the craft connects to goldsmithing and printmaking, …
Sandblasting and abrasive-blasted glass
Abrasive blasting frosts glass by eroding it through a resist. It is the deepest and most controllable way to decorate glass, and the one with a …
Laser marking metal without cutting it
Annealing, dye change and ablation mark metal while leaving the protective layer intact. On stainless steel and anodised aluminium that distinction is …