Engraving on acrylic glass through a foil layer
Hey everyone,
I'm very new to anything lasercutting, but got assigned the task to create some trophies at work in our makerspace.
Basically, the plan is to have 2 cm thick acrylic glass blocks that get a design engraved with the laser cutter. Last year's trophies had an additional layer of gold on the back that was also cut through and made it look much nicer, but the coworker that did that isn't available to ask for his process/resources. I suspect he milled it, but I don't have access to that, so I gotta use the laser.
I'm wondering what the best way to do it is. Is there some kind of self-adhesive foil that I can apply and then laser through? From my research it looked like Vinyl and polycarbonate foils either have nasty vapors or dont laser very cleanly.
Another option would be spraypaint, but again, I'm unsure what kinds and if they laser cleanly. Edit: Would alkyd based paints work?
If the risk of messing it up is too great, I'll maybe just skip the whole gold thing alltogether.
Edit: Picture of last years trophy https://imgur.com/a/342xyLp