Hi Cori, another fantastic video, thank you. Do you NEED the rotary tool in order to engrave a tumbler or mug or is there a workaround for that. Will you be doing a video soon showing it in action. I really want a laser but being in Canada I need to add around 40% to the cost, so this one definitely is still reasonable.
I think you need the rotary tool! It rotates the tumbler (or whatever) as it engraves so that the height of the engraving is always the same. If you just put the tumbler in there and tried to engrave a design, the amount of power hitting the design at the closest part of the tumbler to the laser would be different than the amount of power hitting it as it slopes away. So the top part would look good but as you get farther down each side, you'd probably end up with a less-deep engraving so the whole thing would be uneven. I really hope that makes sense-I need to show that in a video! Great idea. And yes! I have plans to use this laser more but I will say it really was good when it was cutting the materials I tested and I had no issues. I have some videos of it in action on my phone but I had literally lost my phone while I was editing the video (FAIL). Found my phone, so I'd be happy to email you a live action video if you'd like! Shoot me an email at hello@heyletsmakestuff.com :)
I have not because it's not particularly easy with a diode laser. Because of the color of the laser, engraving clear and white can be difficult and I haven't attempted it yet. But there are some videos out there showing different methods that should work similarly on any diode laser: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-jXvuLdXclrM.html
