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Vinyl On Pint Glasses, or?

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So I made some Etched Pint Drinking Glasses, using Armour Etch (an etching cream) and my cutter to make the stencil. Making a few isn't to time consuming but I recently made a pretty big order of 50+ and it literally took me from sun up to sun down to cut / weed all the stencils, apply to glass then apply cream and rinse off. Maybe I was just slow because it was basically my first time, or it probably does take that long. I've just been asked if I could do more of these glasses.

 

My question is, is there a better / faster process? Maybe if I don't really need the etched look, I could try screen printing the glass? Not sure how well that ink will hold up though. Or Could even possibly just do a vinyl decal on it, but not sure how it would hold in a dishwasher. Any idea on how to speed this process up or another media more suitable for this application would be nice. Thanks

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People put vinyl on sometimes but I would wonder how long they will last in regular service. If they liked the etched look then that's what they are probably wanting. You might try blast etching, it etched much deeper and is very impressive. You still have all the cut and prep time or maybe a little more because the whole class needs protected but the etching just takes a few seconds with a blast cabinet. Many of us use the cabinets available at HF with good success. Just make sure you are charging enough to make it worth it. I have occasionally mis-judged my time on jobs and ended making very little when it was all over. I just honored the price but let them know that was the only order I could fulfill at that number and gave them a new more accurate quote. Happens to all new (and even established) businesses. 

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You could try Rayzist however I think its only for sand carving/ Blasting. Then there is another product made for t-shirt screen printing but read somewhere (which I cant find now) Ez screen printing film.

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I've been looking into a blast cabinet. What all do I need? I have an air compressor. So is it just the cabinet and some type of gun with a hopper for the sand / beads?

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I think you may need to adjust your time management slightly. Of course this does depend on how complicated the weeding is but I can bang out a dozen etched glasses in a half hourish to 45 minutes. This isn't including designing. I do have slightly different rates for how complicated I estimate the design/weeding to be.

 

I'll prep and clean all my glasses while the vinyl is cutting, weed / mask, apply stencils, then etch multiple glasses at a time. I've messed around with armour etch a bit and I personally find my best results are from doing 4-6 at a time (depending on size of exposed area). Leaving the cream on for 2-3 minutes, rinsing (you can reclaim the etching cream, it's reusable), letting the first lot dry while I do another lot for 3 minutes, then I got back and re-etch everything for an additional 2-3 minutes.

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The cabinet comes with the gun. Just add blast media. They sell that there pretty cheap too. Aluminum Oxide works pretty good. Look for something in the 100 to 220 grit range. 220 will give you a finer frosted look. I bought the table top version and move it out of my way when I am not using it. Probably a good idea to add a water collector and pressure regulator too. Put them at the cabinet end of the line (I mounted mine on the box itself) I also use a decent light but got by for a while with a Dewalt 18v worklight sitting on top with the light pulled down shining inside through the glass. 

 

Pretty addictive. I blast a lot of pyrex cooking pans. Reverse the image on the bottom so they can see it through the pan when it's empty. All the cooks in your life will Oohh and awhh over that for hours. You can do double etching and get a 3D look too. Make two layers and only remove the deep etch area first, etch pretty deep tehn remove the second part and just give it a light frosting and they look really great. This look works great with leaves and flowers. Etch the stems deep. 

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My wife got me a Cyclone E500 for Christmas and I love it. It is just slightly more expensive than the HF ones, $180 is about the cheapest I've seen it, but it is a single piece of rotationally molded plastic so there are no joints for dust to leak out.

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You could save some time by applying the vinyl to the glass and then weeding it. I have found that I can work faster that way. I sand blast so all my scraps get used for masking the glass.

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