Laser Engraving Cylinders: Design Options for Cylindrical Products
Laser engraving cylinders is the same whether it’s a wine bottle, baseball bat or high precision milled titanium, today CNCROi.com will run through some of the possibilities we offer you when it comes to cylindrical products.
Today’s demonstration will be using the cylinders made to hold lots of double-sided tape.
CNCROi.com recently had a project involving two boxes of custom double-sided tape, one of those NDA projects we can’t talk about and the results were AWESOME but I think we are safe showing off these tape cylinders, of which we had MANY left over.
Like our Austrian wide-format industrial laser, the rotary system that we also bought from Trotec Laser is a high precision piece of machinery.
It’s incredibly accurate and can work is so many ways, I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface possibility wise so let’s see what we can do with something that’s not consistent in density or material composition, much less diameter.
I decided to engrave my typical palm trees as the leaves are highly detailed and this was before I finished-up our new CNCROi.com logo that was made to showcase our work.
I prefer to test things that are on the bleeding edge of what’s possible as just about everything else is child’s play by comparison.
If you want to go way back in time, here’s a video I made in our first shop showing laser engraving onto cardboard that’s been printed on.
August of 2015 seems like AGES AGO!
Cardboard is a wonderful demonstration material, it’s plentiful, costs nothing and has a pretty good consistency and strength.
Of course, we can make stencils with cardboard, animal shapes (yes, animal shapes) and just about anything.
Alright, now that you now know that CNCROi.com is a master of cardboard, let’s focus on our custom engraving cylinders.
For the first demonstration, we’ll engrave the same design 3 times vertically.
This demonstrates a few things about laser engraving cylinders, the first that our results are repeatable anywhere ON the cylinder and secondly, the different results we get using the same design across different areas of the cylinder.
Additionally, it shows you, the reader and soon to be customer, that you aren’t stuck into any one way of having us add a design to a cylinder, we can put literally anything onto anywhere design wise.
CNCROi.com can also make limited edition cylinders, so each one is engraved with a 1 of X or if you really want to go nuts, a completely personalized cylinder produced on-demand for gifts.
There are incredible possibilities when you marry a wonderful design, top of the line equipment and experience that’s second to none.
Just look at the incredible clarity of the design, everything is nice and sharp, impressive considering how awful this cardboard is for such a demonstration to begin with!
All the inner corners and lines around the text, including the grass and leaves of the palm tree are sharp without any jaggedness in or around the CNCROi.com.
The results look amazing, to compare this to essentially the same design but on glass, check out an earlier video I made that involved another highly popular cylindrical item, wine bottles!
Personally, I prefer the wine bottle and the glass produces a far better result than cardboard but for demonstration purposes, it does a great job showcasing the variation in quality using a similar design on two different materials.
Alright, now “anybody” can do what we just did as it’s pretty easy so let’s up the level of difficulty.
CNCROi.com will now engrave a design all the way around the cardboard cylinder.
Laser engraving cylinders is more “difficult” because any error will be amplified as the design goes through to the end, if a missing step happens, it will get progressively worse as it builds-up onto itself.
Of course, when you have a CNC laser that costs as much as a house and a rotary system that’s the cost of a motorbike, these aren’t issues that CNCROi.com has.
Laser engraving cylinders is a pretty neat process, as the machine is engraving across a surface and making infinitely small rotations between each “line of engraving” that would be completely impossible to do manually.
The process behind laser engraving cylinders is the same regardless of the diameter, design parameters or material.
CNCROi.com offers ultimate repeatability and custom production processes for your application.
Custom laser engraving, regardless of the application, requires a highly tuned machine and software that supports this level of absolute precision.
The lower the engineering level of tolerance, the higher the prices but also the more stuff that can be done with the machine.
Laser engraving cylinders using our combination rotary system allows CNCROi.com to really make anything you want, from custom corporate awards that involve something rounded that you want personalized to small promotional items like batons and musical instruments like flutes.
The result of the larger palm tree across the entire surface of the cardboard cylinder are seamless, you can’t really tell where the design started and ended production wise.
As I rotate it around, you can see there are no missing “steps” in the design, there are no blank areas in the design either.
The sharpness is the same whether the design from the beginning to the end of the end of the laser engraving cylinders process.
Our machine is just as easily capable of doing one-offs as production cycles in the million and each will be just as clear as the first regardless of where in the batch any particular products happens to be.
The darker color compared to the earlier design was accomplished by putting the laser out of focus, this causes more “burning” with the cost being a slight loss in the quality of the design as the laser focus is a bit larger.
Regardless, this all looks amazing and precise and is clearly legible!
Just take a look at the extreme close-up of the palm tree leaves, everything is sharp, everything is exactly where it should be and the machine didn’t miss a beat!
CNCROi.com has laser engraving cylinders for many clients, let us put that experience and expertise for your custom project!
Contact CNCROi.com right now!