Slate coasters are beautiful, elegant looking and perfect for laser engraving! Once they are properly treated, a high-powered laser engraver will have no trouble etching a beautiful image of your choice. At ShakeABerry Keepsakes, we offer several engravable stock images to choose from. We also work with our customers to bring their vision to life. These engraved slate coasters are the perfect gift for any wedding, anniversary or any special occasion. Be sure to visit our site to see some of our examples.
How It’s Made:
- Obtain Slate Coasters: Purchase or make your slate coasters. We purchase our slate coaster from Amazon because they are good quality and ship quick when orders are high and stock is low. They also already have the rubber protective backing on the bottom that help protect surfaces.
- Sanding Slate Coasters: Next, we sand down our coasters to an even surface. This improves the engraving image to eliminate uneven engraving. We first engrave using an aggressive 120 grit sandpaper, then follow up with a finer 220 grit sandpaper. Use what you have, the key is just to get it smooth.
- Applying Paint: Once the sanding is complete, we apply a Matte Black spray paint to each of the coasters. We’ve tried different glossy type paints, but the look isn’t to our preference. In our opinion, the Matte black has the best final engraving results. Lesson Learned: Before you apply the spray paint, make sure you apply painters’ tape around the bottom so that there isn’t any paint oozing onto the bottom.
- Laser Engraver: Once your slate coasters are – very important – FULLY DRY, then you are ready to engrave. We are using the xTool Pro 20W laser with xTool free Creative Space software. We import our SVG image into the software and we use the xTool air assist. Always use your protective eyewear if you have an open engraver like ours.
- Engraving Settings: Getting the right settings was tricky for us. We tested multiple different power and speed settings before we found the one that worked the best for us. Lesson Learned: Each laser engraver behaves differently. These settings might not work best for your laser. Be sure to test out your settings before beginning your final product.
- Material: Stone Coaster
- Power: 50%
- Speed: 70%
- Final Touch: Once the engraving is complete, we polish each one with a clean, dry towel to remove any residue. We find with the settings that we have, there is very little residue to wipe off.
We really enjoy making laser engraved slate coasters, and our customers love them too. We’ve included links in the headers above to each of the products we use, which are easily purchased on Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. However, we would never recommend a product that we don’t stand by. We hope this information is helpful to you and we hope you try making them for yourself at home!
Happy Engraving!
ShakeABerry Keepsakes