Hey, looking for an affordable machine to engrave pint glasses for gifts, as it’s main use. Never done anything like this before, and looking for something that’s fairly plug and play with maybe just a few youtube videos for advice and some practice glasses to get things looking presentable. Price range being up to around $500. Any help would be very much appreciated, as I don’t have a lot of extra funds with my kids playing travel sports and this is a fun looking hobby I’d like to give a try. Thanks!
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Um…for something like that you will probably want/need a rotary axis to turn the glass. You might be able to find an el cheapo K40 laser for under $500, and possibly some of the newer diode lasers for less than that. But for the extra axis, you’re probably pushing over $500. And don’t get me started on it being “plug and play”.
That being said, I haven’t shopped around for quite a while so maybe I’m wrong. But here are the things you need to google about:
A) what is the material you want to engrave?
B) what wavelength laser will engrave that (not all lasers are created equal).
C) a rotary axis. The distance from the laser to the material is critical. Glasses are typically cylindrical/conical making the distance from the laser to the material vary a lot (in laser distance terms).
Plug and play is expensive.
You can save yourself a ton of money if you do your homework and educate yourself on how to do such a thing. There is a lot of information here–perhaps too much? Maybe visiting “YouTube University” would be a good start?
That will need a CO2 laser. You need a wavelength to which glass is opaque. That means no LED lasers.
The K40 Intro linked at the top of every page should help you learn a lot that will help you out. Take a look and ask questions here based on what you read there. 
$500 is going to be tricky for getting started with a CO2 laser, cooling, and a rotary attachment. Not necessarily impossible with some DIY. But also you’ll want to understand that a bunch of parts of the laser are consumables. It’s very much not a one-and-done.
I’m on my phone off desktop mode, so there wasn’t a K40 Intro showing. Thanks for the heads up. Good read, kinda scary, haha. I’ll keep reading up on the site. Appreciated!
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I watched a video of someone using one of the cheaper engravers on pint glasses, but he was using something to spray the glass before using the engraver. Then he used some chemicals to strip the paint off. Is this an option? Or just a huge hassle? Didn’t seem too bad if I’m just doing one here and one there for gifts, but wondered about the quality compared to the co2 laser.
For example, there’s a used Creality Falcon 2 near me for $830, for for $1400 one comes with the roller, an industrial chiller, and a few other things. Not sure if all of that is needed besides the roller that was mentioned above. Trying to figure out prices, but if i had to sell a few toys to get something a bit higher end that would make this 10x easier, i could go that route too.
If I were engraving glass with a laser, I’d use a frequency that didn’t shine right through the object.
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Might do better with a chuck for small glasses.
As @mcdanlj stated, visible light diodes go completely through a glass object.
I believe you don’t much of a choice other than co2.
There is what’s termed the indirect method of engraving. You paint it with something that absorbs the beam frequency… when the painted area gets hot, it shatters the glass.
It’s a pain and it’s slow as you have to paint and wait for it to dry. Then after it’s dry, you have to get the stuff off it… then you can see how well it worked.
There isn’t much out there for <$500.
Good luck
