Engraving drinking glasses with the LP2 and 3rd axis accessory.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” as the saying goes. The method shown in the film below is the method that gives me the results I am most pleased with, but my results won’t appeal to everyone. But the preparation is the same regardless of the resolution, power and depth settings you yourself prefer. You can’t expect to just coat a glass, throw it on the rollers and expect perfect results right from the beginning. On my journey in glass engraving I have scrapped maybe 15-20 glasses trying different coatings and settings, until I ended up here. If you find my results are similar to what you are hoping for, I hope I save you a few ruined glasses on your journey to your perfect results.

After following a tip about Tempera paint, which I airbrush on to the glasses, I have never looked back. It is cheap, readily available, easy to spray (dilute with a little water), non toxic (it’s what kids play with in kindergaten) and best of all, the easiest clean ever! For engraving conical objects, the Double Distance Probe is a real help. If you don’t have access to a 3D printer there are people in the different user groups willing to print and send accessories for a small fee to cover their costs. The image correction program is a helpful tool, and hats off to Viktor Linder and Yi Yu for making this available to everyone. If you are unsure if everything is set up correctly, simply tape some brown paper to your glass and do a test run at really low settings, just enough to mark the paper and check the image and rotation orientation. To prevent the glass from slipping on the rollers, I cover them with tape for more grip, this is explained in detail in this film. The center line I drew is very useful for aligning the LP2 and rollers, but you can just mark the center line on an empty toilet roll holder and keep it handy for the next time you want to check alignment.

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