Engraving of shot glasses (American Shot Glass)

As part of a customer request, we determined the optimal engraving parameters for OLYMPIA American Shot glasses using a small series of tests.

The glasses are actually well suited for CO2 engraving with a rolling device where you can adjust the tilt angle. They have straight side walls that converge conically downwards.

Our first idea was to engrave the bottom of the glasses so that you can see the logo after the glass has been emptied. Unfortunately, this isn't possible because the bottom first dents from the outside in and the inner 2 cm bulge outward again, which means you don't have a sufficiently large, straight surface for engraving.

Engraving on the side of the glass was therefore the only option.

Technical parameters of engraving glass

Material: OLYMPIA American Shot Glass
Color: transparent
Performance: 15% - 60%
Speed: 30%
Frequency: 25KHz
Passages: 1
Focus shift: 0
Air cooling: 0
Mode: GRID
Laser: CO2 40W
Resolution: 100 - 3600 DPI
Font:-
Duration: 20 - 389 seconds

Hints:
The graphic provided consists of the symbol of the round table of the Arthurrunde, supplemented by a small city coat of arms in the middle and a small text above and below the graphic. The graphic was round, had a diameter of 3cm and was in vector format

The challenge of the project was to create an engraving that clearly reproduces all elements of the graphic without any sharp edges at the edges of the engraving.

The engraving parameters for glass preset by Gravotech were:
Performance: 60%
Speed: 30%
Resolution: 600 DPI

This resulted in a processing time of 103 seconds.

The following table shows the variations of the performance and resolution parameters compared to the processing time. The speed was always 30%.

Performance / DPI / Time
60% 600 dpi 103 seconds
50% 600 dpi 103 seconds *1
55% 600 dpi 103 seconds
55% 1200 dpi 194 seconds
55% 100 dpi 20 seconds
55% 200 dpi 37 seconds
55% 300 dpi 55 seconds
55% 400 dpi 72 seconds
55% 800 dpi 134 seconds
55% 1000 dpi 166 seconds

55% 1200 dpi 198 seconds *2
35% 1200 dpi 199 seconds
45% 2400 dpi 387 seconds
45% 3600 dpi 578 seconds

35% 2400 dpi 388 seconds
25% 2400 dpi 389 seconds
15% 2400 dpi 387 seconds

*1
These are the fastest variants to produce an acceptable result. Unfortunately, the font is a bit thin, so that small parts of some letters are missing.

*2
This is the best result. Even the thin font is easy to read. You pay for this quality with a correspondingly long engraving time.