Etching Flat Glass

Seth and I I etched flat glass with a thickness of 3/32 inch using the 4 inch focal length laser at 20% power.  Our scan gaps were 10 one-thousands to 15/1000 mm and our nominal speed was 400 mm per second with laser frequency 10 kilohertz.

Operationally however, we observed that the laser head speed is more in the 150-175 mm per second range.  We are working with Boss Laser to try and troubleshoot the drop in speed vs. what is indicated in software and what is displayed in the on-board laser control screen.  This costs us wall clock time and is also affecting the quality of the work when the head is moving too slowly.


We also used wet newspaper to improve the quality of the thin segments of the design.  This is a clue that we learned from Boss Laser from their website in terms of optimizing results on glass.  We found because of the dry conditions and the strong air flow in the chamber that we needed to pause this scan several times so that we could take a wet brush and refresh the newspaper, as it was trying out quickly.

See this link for tips and tricks for etching glass:

You can go to this web page for Boss Laser suggested parameters for a variety of materials:


See this album for photos and videos of etching our glass

Warning: do not attempt to cut glass using the laser!  The glass simply cannot absorb that much heat in a short period of time and the result is that you'll have fractured and cracked glass with many splinters to clean up in the laser chamber.

Based on experience, we determined that will need to purchase some basic tools and supplies to help us while working with glass:

Toothbrushes
Eye droppers
Baking soda
Newspaper
Regular cleaning brushes