Hi hi.

I need to engrave some bricks with 3 lines of about 20 characters each line. Bricks are 7.75" across and 3.812" tall. They are a light grey shade.

Available to me are a laser (35 watt) and an engraver (New Hermes IS7000XP). I'd think sandblast, but my boss wants to keep these in house, and we don't have that set of equipment.

Any ideas?

Sei

Hi Sei.

I'd be interested in hearing how this works out for you. I tried doing some light grey colored limestone bricks awhile back and couldn't get favorable results compared to sandblasting. I tried lasering high power and low speed, masking and paint filling/spraying, but it just didn't work for me at all. The stone etched a very light color and didn't laser very deep.

Good luck. Hopefully someone else will have a solution.

Sei,

Chose your experts carefully here; several will likely respond with "I do it all the time."

IMHO, Forget it! you can't do it with either. Job it out to a sand carver.

See one our forum's shining star's (Fred Swartz) response to the same question in the current Recognition Review(April 05) in the Ask the Experts column.

Unfortunately I am not a member of the ARA, and thus do not get Recognition Review. However, getting the word from you, someone in the industry so long and someone who sells both types of machines and has a full understanding of their capabilities and limitations, gives me a little more backing when I tell them flatly, "I can't do it."

Thanks,
Sei

Update: They're convinced, we're jobbing it out, and my hands are clean of the whole deal.

Bing!

Sei

Sei,

I personally don't like to sandcarve items with rough surfaces like stone and brick. I will do slate, marble and granite, but I use a company out of the Pacific Northwest to do my wholesale carving on stones. This company is:

Say It In Stones
1520 Woodard Ct. NW
Olympia, WA 98502
Tel: 888-956-1017

I am not sure if they do brick, but based on the quality work they do on contoured stone, brick would be a piece of cake for them.

We actually have a sand carver about 30 miles from us who has taken on the job. Thanks for the reference, though. I'll keep it handy if anything goes wrong or for when this comes up again.

Sei