Custom Bitcoin Coasters: Laser Deep Etching
Custom Bitcoin coasters made by CNCROi.com can be made out of any material but today, we’ll focus on their stainless steel variants.
The custom Bitcoin coaster you see in this video and photos is 4″ in diameter, but if you wanted it to be bigger or smaller, or a different thickness than that of 1/8″ 3 mm used in this blog post.
For this specific project, CNCROi.com used our new Galvo system over our gantry system, it’s best optimized for small items to “quickly” etch metals a lot faster than our gantry though that’s very much based on the material and the design being etched.
If you want to see how deep etching is done with a gantry system, here’s a great example I did a few years back.
I’m also right in the middle of renovating and re-organizing the CNCROi.com shop right now, so that’s why the video looks a bit messy but this doesn’t affect our production capabilities, just the environment and position of literally all our equipment to make room for more coming into the shop to further expand our capabilities.
The major advantage of having multiple CNC platforms, and the same holds true to lasers now as well, is that we can produce items that are optimal given the design and material for the project, in other words, using the best machine for the job at hand rather than having to fit a machine to a project.
The only way to deep etch stainless steel with this level of precision is using CNCROi.com‘s fiber laser, the galvo is a faster platform because it’s only mirrors directing the laser positioning while with the gantry, it’s a whole X and Y system that has to move, hence a lot slower though they both have exactly the same power.
Of course, deep etching can also happen on glass and other materials, CNCROi.com certainly isn’t limited to only stainless steel when it comes to this process.
For these custom Bitcoin coasters, the process was done using the galvo because it fit within the production envelope and due to speed, is a lot faster to deep etch stainless steel.
The bright light you see in this production of custom Bitcoin coasters is the instant vaporizing and excavating of the stainless steel itself once it’s hit by the fiber laser source at CNCROi.com.
Filming these projects, especially deep etching, requires some serious time lapsing, what you saw on the custom Bitcoin coasters took hours to produce, and although it’s 1 mm or 1/32″ deep, it just gives you an idea of the time it takes to do this type of work though if you got yourself into Bitcoin years ago, it’s a drop in the bucket financially.
Most of the metal that we process in the shop for custom projects is actually not deep etching, due to the time and thus costs involved, but actually just “normal” etching that isn’t deep but will still outlast any other process out there, screen printing to vinyl stickers.
I’m still very much optimizing settings using my new CNCROi.com galvo fiber laser machine, it’s a wonderfully fun machine to work with for a lot of projects that will never see the light of day on this blog or online due to NDA but it does have its limitations as well.
The mistake I did was having sticky tape on the surface, I’m removing that and moving to something a lot stronger but regardless, lesson learned the hard way and at least I know how to fix such a situation, it didn’t affect the custom Bitcoin coasters project though.
What I really like about the Bitcoin logo is that it has a lot of very fine details, and having great equipment really shines when something this extensive needs to be done at CNCROi.com.
My shop also does 2.5D carving on wooden materials, so as you can see, there is a lot of flexibility if you want something that’s incredibly unique for yourself or as a gift.
Although the fiber laser source is moving incredibly fast in this custom Bitcoin coasters video and photographs, in real life, it’s removing such a slight amount of material that many many many endless passes must be made to achieve the depth we did and of course, I could have easily gone a lot deeper if it was warranted.
Now that this custom Bitcoin coaster deep etching is complete, let’s take a look at it before cleaning, still toasty from all the etching.
Stainless steel is incredibly difficult to photograph so multiple angles really makes this project shine so that you can better see what was done.
You can really see the depth both before and after cleaning in the above and below picture of this custom Bitcoin coasters production, I’ve worked with a lot of metal at CNCROi.com and the look of stainless steel still amazes me.
What’s really cool about custom Bitcoin coaster production using deep etching is that the results are PERMANENT, there is no ink or dyes involved, nothing will ever peel, crack or fade, it looks as fantastic now as it will hundreds of years from now.
These coasters look amazing regardless of what light or room they are found in, they are a semi-mirror polish so you can see my fingers reflecting on the surface of these custom Bitcoin coasters.
Want some custom Bitcoin coasters or any kind of coaster using any material or design? Contact CNCROi.com right now!