Introduction: Real Laser Engraved Egg,

By Ross Ballinger Design
About: I'm a design student at Brunel University and continue to do a range of projects.

*Please Vote for this project in the Egg competition to show your support and keep me risking my laser.*

I recently set up my laser engraving business, and have had to put instructables on the back burner. Which has been a shame, but I'm back now and am going to use the opportunity to try something new and to say thank you for support in the past by giving a 3 month pro membership to any a random commenter.

Step 1: What Eggs to Use.

When starting I had no idea what colour the egg shell will engrave. However I made an educated guess at white this means we want the darkest egg shell we can source, which would be Maran or Welsummer however I had to settle with Barred Rock as I had limited time or suppliers.

What to look for in your eggs;

  • Even shape
  • Dark colour
  • No cracks
  • Long Expiry

Step 2: Making the CAD

There is a few types of design which you can used I have put a simple versions below, most of the designing however is just going to be text so it is not necessary to perform most of the methods. (If you want any more information on how to perform one of the methods just ask in the comments.)

  • Make a design, over-detailed or overcomplicated images do not present well (avoid shading). So make sure you take your time and be willing to give up and find a new idea if you have to.
  • The simplest method of image preparation is just flattening the colours. Using whatever software you have change the image mode to black and white it works well on pictures which were originally black and white.
  • Thresholding is a method which converts the source image to black and white based on the luminosity of each pixel. Bright areas will end up as white and dark areas will end up as black. This method is very effective on evenly-lit images and tends to be one of my preferred methods.
  • Vector Tracing my main method start by opening an image in Adobe Illustrator (or other software) and select Object then Live Trace. Adjust the threshold, blur, path fitting and minimum area settings to produce a vector version of your image.

Step 3: Holding the Egg in Place.

The eggs as you might expect cause a lot of problems for example the egg moving, or the egg cracking, or leaking. To fix this I tried a few ideas but the best idea ended up being bluetack inside of a bowl. As shown in the picture above.

Step 4: Engraving the Egg

To start I made a design with "#Easter" on it to try find the correct setting which were speed 500 , power 70 and scan gap 0.04. From here I then engraved a set of eggs with a few different designs on them, including some logos of local businesses.

Step 5: Displaying the Eggs.

Now the eggs were engraved I decided to display them in a bowl with tissue to protect them as the eggs are still raw. Thanks for reading, please vote for us in the egg contest and also comment below for the chance to get a 3 month pro membership.