Two-color acrylic faceplate

giovanni

Well-known member
Hey guys! I am soon going to have access to a laser engraver/cutter and I want to make some faceplates for some pedals I have on the TODO list (I will probably switch to UV prints later but I already purchased a bunch of enclosures). I was wondering if anybody had recommendations on which two-color acrylic sheets to use. I was inclined to try the Inventables ones because they look about right (1/16" thick), but I want to hear if you guys had recommendations first.
Thanks!
 
At work we use Gravotech Gravoply and it's the most consistent in terms of quality and lasability (is that a word?). I can't remember which particular material type we use, probably Gravoply Ultra. If we can't get Gravoply, we'll use Rowmark, but it's a little more unpredictable in terms of laser settings.You'll probably be fine with most materials as long as your laser is 10W+ and well-focused. The top ply is usually much thinner than you think, and engraving too deeply doesn't look great, so get your speed & power dialed in early.

I've not been too impressed with how the 2-ply engraving plastics look on pedals, but it looks good enough for modular faceplates.
My Lasercut Eurorack Faceplates EDIT Large.jpeg

For pedals, I prefer thin baltic birch plywood. With the right settings you can get some clean, legible engraving text that comes out quite a bit darker than the non-engraved parts.
 
The only type we used was Rowmark. Mainly the ones with a metallic face, but on occasion the black white lam. Usually in .030. Occasionally in .020. We got very clean results, not as clean as machine engraved, but close. That said, it was a Universal machine, (although our second was a Chinese knockoff, that after weeks of adjustment finally focused well enough for good scoring.) Wood does look great with scanning; it’s a very distinct look.
B3233903-CD3B-4F85-B95C-D3518A90F43A.jpeg
 
The only type we used was Rowmark. Mainly the ones with a metallic face, but on occasion the black white lam. Usually in .030. Occasionally in .020. We got very clean results, not as clean as machine engraved, but close. That said, it was a Universal machine, (although our second was a Chinese knockoff, that after weeks of adjustment finally focused well enough for good scoring.) Wood does look great with scanning; it’s a very distinct look.
View attachment 41221
That looks nice! I've used the metallic Gravoply a few times, but it often had some odd & uneven texture on the unengraved areas. Maybe this thinner material is a bit more uniform, I'll have to give it a shot.

What wattage are you working with on those Universal machines? We have two "well-loved" Gravotech LX100s with 40W CO2 tubes, so definitely not state of the art. That said, they cut engraving materials like a champ and I've had good results with up to 1/4" acrylic sheets in there as well. We did have some quality issues a while back that we solved by upgraded our compressed air & exhaust setup. It seems that the smoke off the acrylic can really fuck with line quality.

P.S. is the top half of that trophy 3D printed? Looks great.
 
That looks nice! I've used the metallic Gravoply a few times, but it often had some odd & uneven texture on the unengraved areas. Maybe this thinner material is a bit more uniform, I'll have to give it a shot.

What wattage are you working with on those Universal machines? We have two "well-loved" Gravotech LX100s with 40W CO2 tubes, so definitely not state of the art. That said, they cut engraving materials like a champ and I've had good results with up to 1/4" acrylic sheets in there as well. We did have some quality issues a while back that we solved by upgraded our compressed air & exhaust setup. It seems that the smoke off the acrylic can really fuck with line quality.

P.S. is the top half of that trophy 3D printed? Looks great.
The universal is 60 watts and the Chinese is 100. Especially when we added the second machine, the exhaust (and vacuum) issues intensified. Because of our spray booth, I had no problem with compressed air. You do really have to look at it as an entire system.

Thanks (about the award)—it’s built “by hand”. The container is an acrylic tube with laser cut .020 acrylic appliqué, the base is fairly similar. The salt (which has an aluminum armature in the middle) is sculpted by hand. The shop makes 2 a year for them. Our bigger resin printer could handle that size, and actually might be worth considering; filament printers (and we have several, all fairly hi res) would be too time consuming to clean up, as there is more of that type than is visible, (and what you don’t see is much smaller type), and getting the surfaces clean around the raised lettering is an exercise in frustration.
 
The universal is 60 watts and the Chinese is 100. Especially when we added the second machine, the exhaust (and vacuum) issues intensified. Because of our spray booth, I had no problem with compressed air. You do really have to look at it as an entire system.
Getting folks to take a systems approach always seems to be a struggle, for some reason it's harder to get capital for infrastructure upgrades than it is for "shiny new toys". I bet that 100W laser would cut through 1/4" acrylic like butter!
Thanks (about the award)—it’s built “by hand”. The container is an acrylic tube with laser cut .020 acrylic appliqué, the base is fairly similar. The salt (which has an aluminum armature in the middle) is sculpted by hand. The shop makes 2 a year for them. Our bigger resin printer could handle that size, and actually might be worth considering; filament printers (and we have several, all fairly hi res) would be too time consuming to clean up, as there is more of that type than is visible, (and what you don’t see is much smaller type), and getting the surfaces clean around the raised lettering is an exercise in frustration.
Damn, that's a cool combo of materials & processes, it really turned out well! If you don't mind me asking, what kind of work does your shop do?

Not super familiar with SLA, but I'm assuming layer lines are pretty much non-existent? We recently picked up a base level Stratasys FDM system and the layers are definitely apparent by both sight and feel. We mostly use it for tooling & jigs, so the appearance hasn't been too much of an issue yet. I am working on some wire guide designs that I would like to lower the friction on though, do you have any experience with any FDM post-processing (e.g. vapor smoothing?) We mostly use ABS, so I was going to give acetone a shot. Although I am a little worried about it messing with the mounting surfaces as they're press-fit, not fastened.
 
SLA and Polyjet both have build lines, but they are very small. Sometimes a few coats of a filling sander and some passes with 400 will remove them. I‘m not sure what the correct name for the process that the resin printers that we have is, they are remarkably inexpensive though. (The smaller machine, with a platform of ~ 6x4x6 inches was around $500, and the larger machine is ~ 7x9x9 at around $1500.) Even better, we just started using water based resins in them, so the wash down and curing are much easier and safer.

We did some vapor polishing, but I tried to avoid it, as CAL-OSHA would have had a field day with what our set up was. I’m not sure about the design or specs of your wire guides, but none of the resins used in filament printers (and ABS is probably the best one for your use case) are very hard, or abrasion resistant. If you could have a small ceramic or other hard, smooth donut for the wire to pass through(even a small brass grommet), that seems like it would be less problematic. Or possibly a filled resin (like nylon / carbon) in an SLS platform. There may even be ceramic containing resins for SLS.

The shop is no longer mine; I retired 2 years ago and now it’s on its own. It’s basically an old school model shop. Part prototype machining, part art studio, etc. Here’s the site:


if I were still active I’d be posting daily in the “whats on your workbench” thread… As is, I go in when I have a project of my own to work on, or if there’s a confusing estimate, etc.
 
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