Thread: Lasercut Tombstones

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We were testing some blue foam in our laser cutter in an attempt to make some cool tombstones. So we did some small tests.

Check it out, and let us know what you think.

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They both look great

I like the detail on the first one.
The second one has the aged look, but it appears too muddy.


Can you control the laser to provide varied levels of burn during the etching?

Or perhaps a secondary burn to ghost the image?

Awww man! Now I am really gonna have to buy me a laser engraver! I hate that!

Looks good.

Yeah I would love to know whether you can controll the bur to come up with a 3D like result.

If so, I am SOLD.

BTW what laser engraver are you using and what are its max sizes?

I am quoting my response to my thread on hauntforum. To answer your other questions, yes! 3D etching is possible and fundamentally easy...

I tell it to do a 3D etch and provide a grayscale image, black is higher laser intensity and white is no laser. Here is a test I did on some low desnisty Ren-Shape.

the Blue foam is 1" and the EPS is 1.5". Currently these are for personal use and I am still refining my methods.

The laser is an Epilog Legend EXT and it cost the company I work for around $37,000.

The foam etches in an interesting way, because heat makes it shrink so radically. If you look closely at the blue foam one (hard to see in the picture) the etched in part looks striny like spiderwebs where as the EPS foam looks rough like some fake old stone. The test stones are no more than 4" tall and I am curious how the "melted" areas will look against a full size stone.

Also the laser focuses it's light like a magnifying glass at a single depth. so below that point the light beam starts to flare out, making it difficult to cut thick materials. In combination with that and the foam shrinking from heat the back side of the cut is signifcantly smaller than the front. you can see it a bit in the photo.
Since the max size I can work with in the laser is just under 3ft x 2ft. I think I will combine the laseretched foam with waterjet cut foam or wood to make good size tombstones.

Our waterjet uses 60,000psi of water pressure squeezed through a .004" diameter hole to cut almost anything up to 7" of steel @ 4ft x 8ft.

Our waterjet is only 2 weeks old so I am still excited about it so I have to share this.

YouTube - Can Water Cut It? Laptop!

Are you going to offer these for sale?

All depends on what it takes to make one, I like the idea. Just have to refine the method first.

i would pay for a custom one.

JM,

Whats the largest dimensions your epilogcan engrave?

The table is 36"x24" But I don't think I can go right to the edges, haven't needed to try yet ;-)

But I did etch a sword blade that stuck off the edge by 1.5". Also it doesn't "etch" metal. we etched away nail polish to create a good mask for acid etching.