Engraving... Perfect White?

[commandercup]

Well I was looking at Grievearz beautiful engraving... and I decided I would try my hand at engraving too...

So I picked up the $20 engraver at home depot and came home and sat for 2 hours...

I ended up with this, albeit its nowhere near as good as Grievearz... which is my question...

How did he/you get such clear whites?

Also, should I be wearing a face mask/safety glasses?

 

[veedubfreak]

Its just like a tatoo. He probably went over it more times to get the full on white. Yours still looks to have quite a bit of untouched spots so the clear is showing which causes it to look lesss "white".

 

[Shumway]

Its just like a tatoo. He probably went over it more times to get the full on white.

Or he possibly etched it on

 

[commandercup]

eh, anyone else who knows how to etch? i really need like a short video of shading lol... There seems to be no change at all when I go over a part... even if I do it for 30 minutes, the tip keeps going into the same grooves over and over...

and what power setting should the etcher be at? 1 - 5 and .5 in between?

 

[alexsabree]

Hmm... looks nice, I don't think its possible to "shade" an engraving.. but what do I know?

 

[Grievearz]

It's possible to do shading with an engraving, you just use less pressure on light areas and go deeper on darker spots. It's very tricky and I've yet to try it but I'd imagine it is the same as tattooing.

Moving on, how I got mine so solid white; Time. You have to go VERY slow when filling it in, just go back and forth as slow as you can making sure to go in lines that touch each other so that no clear shows between. What you can do is go back and go in a second direction over what you have. Go up and down or diagonally very slowly over it again and it should darken up. My first practice attempt had a lot of clear spots showing through and I made sure to fix it on my side panel etch.

Edit: On the power note, I had mine running at 3ish for the outline and then cranked it up all the way for the filling in. Just remember to go slow, using the weight of the tool to push down and making sure your paths leave no gaps.

Hope I was helpful!

 

[commandercup]

yeah thanks lol, I guess it does take a long time

all the way up to 5 for the shading? 0_0, when I tried 5, the point went pretty deep into the acrylic

 

[Grievearz]

You don't really want to push into the acrylic, let the weight of the tool be most of your downward pressure. Just let it kind of glide on the surface.

 

[carnageX]

Maybe you should try and get your hands on some spare sheets of acrylic and/or plexiglass to just practice on for a while. Then once you get the hang of it, start doing it on your case =).