Laser engraving brass (or an alternative)

[My Old Landy]

You’d have to flog a lot of trinkets to make that back

Yeah, I am already £5k in with the stuff we have got. It's not really money making more fun!

 

[Dr.Al]

What are you using for photo resist?

It's a film, I think it's called "dry film photoresist" or something like that

Clickspring on YT has some good videos for doing smaller stuff.

Yes, I based the process on the one he used in episode 9 of the Byzantine Sundial Calendar series (which he hasn't released on youtube yet but it on his patreon).

When you do your design, make it an outline, rather than a big solid block of colour.

Think of it like the grime under your finger nails - that stays there throughout the day, but, if it were the same grime on the palm of your hand, or the tip of your finger, it would be gone in no time.

The infill bond with the metal will be weak. Even if you etch it into the brass, brass is still a soft metal. The way you protect the design is the same as the way you "protect" the grime in your fingernails - put it down the bottom of an acute groove.

Something like print will just scrape off. Chemically colored brass may last, but not well. A single line engraved design will last the best. And, on a tool box, if the original infill does come out, it will just get replaced by grime anyway, and look very similar!

If you do a big block of colour youll loose it in a short time.



As a side note - you mention wax -

What they used to do would be apply the wax, clean off the excess, and then heat the part to melt the wax, to get that nice meniscus on the cut. But that would be unsuitable for your application as you would just loose the wax in no time.

I've used dial wax (black shellac) elsewhere on the tool chest: the drawers have brass plates set into them with numbers (so I know which drawer goes where). When I did that, I heated the part, melted the wax onto the surface, waited for it to cool, sanded it flush, then heated the part again in the oven. This was the first photo I found of one of the plates post-oven and pre-chopping up:

@Dr.Al send Julian your design for critique, as I said he’s the expert here..

Will do.