The gifts and awards markets are a great way to expand a small sign shop’s market share.

Today’s versatile engraving systems, either rotary or laser, can mark on cylindrical objects like beer mugs, wine glasses and curved metal parts for industrial uses. These machines have added utilities that can rotate an object making it possible to engrave the entire surface of the substrate, even if the surface isn’t flat.

Laser Engraving

Mike Dean, vice president of sales and marketing for Epilog Laser in Golden, Colorado, says that the most popular option for its laser engraving equipment is a rotary attachment. The attachment easily allows companies to engrave on cylindrical objects.

Yeti brand mugs are in huge demand. They are insulated stainless steel mugs that can keep beverages hot or cold.

“They are of a size and shape that are really attractive to people,” Dean says. “So, those are exceptionally popular with laser engraving companies.”

Some shops spend their whole day just engraving Yeti mugs, he says. They are very popular as corporate gifts.

Josh Stephens, business development for Trotec Laser in Plymouth, Michigan, says that Yeti mugs are a challenge to engrave because normal CO2 lasers won’t interact with the metal.

“The energy bounces off or disburses, like shining a light on a mirror,” he says. To make a CO2 laser work on a metal surface, it must be coated with a marking solution. That way, the laser reacts with the marking solution, changing the lasered area a dark black and bonding the chemicals to the surface of the mug so that it doesn’t rub off over time.

The other way to mark on metal items is to use a fiber laser, which is a different type of laser source, Stephens says. “With a fiber laser, you can etch the metal directly or mark it directly. However, you are going to be limited. They specialize in marking metals and plastics; no wood; no paper; no fabrics.”

If a company attempts to engrave a pint glass with a fiber laser, there will be no reaction at all. The fiber wavelength will pass through clear substrates, he adds. It wouldn’t affect it.

Many customers that purchase Epilog’s rotary attachment will combine the technology with sand blasting.

A sand blast mask is applied over the material that is being engraved. It is a flexible polyurethane material with an adhesive backing. The mask is stuck onto bare glass and the laser engraves through the mask, which creates a void. Where that void is, is where the sand creates a deep etch.

Many people use that process with wine bottles.

Epilog has two types of rotary attachments for its engravers, a rim-drive rotary attachment—where the cylindrical object is placed on rollers that turn the object as it is being engraved—and a three-jaw chuck rotary attachment that will clamp a cylindrical object from both sides while it is being engraved. This is used a lot in the industrial market, marking equipment like drill bits. The clamps allow the engraver to engrave all the way around parts made out of anodized aluminum and stainless steel.

Most people do glass engraving, so a standard rim-drive rotary attachment is the perfect tool for that, says Dean.

Glass conducts a lot of heat. When working with glass, the engraver is really fracturing it rather than engraving it. Because of that there may be chipping. To prevent that, many shops will put dish soap on the glass beforehand, which creates a heat sink, says Trotec’s Stephens.

“The soap pulls the heat out of the glass so it won’t chip as badly,” he says. Another trick is to wrap the glass with wet paper. You can laser through it, which has the same effect as the dish soap in that the moisture in the paper pulls the heat away from the glass so it doesn’t chip.

Another popular item to engrave is wooden baseball bats. Teams put their team name or logo on them.

Others create a textured grip for the bat by engraving a pattern, like diamonds, all the way around the handle of the bat. Drumsticks are another unique item that can be engraved like a bat, with an engraved grip around the ends of the sticks.

One way to accentuate the engraving you did on a wine bottle or glass is to finish it up, post production, by adding Rub ’n Buff paint into the engraving. The extra paint rubs off with a cloth.

“It is an added step but you could increase your margin on the item by having that extra step in the process,” Stephens says. “Adding the color to it could entice more buyers to pay a higher price for that item.”

Like the Yeti mugs or wine glasses engraved with a person’s name, the demand for these items grows via old school marketing.

“You hear about something, you see something and then you really want that. That scenario is playing out with a lot of these items. ‘Look at this, I got my name on it.’ Now other wine drinkers want their name on their glasses,” he says.

Trotec offers three different types of rotary fixtures. One solution is a vice or cone grip that allows the piece to be suspended mid-air and held while it is lasered. Another is the roller method, which is like a hot dog roller in a gas station, Stephens says. The third option is a mixture of the cone grip and roller engraver attachments.

Trotec’s rotary fixtures have tilting mechanisms that can adjust the taper of a piece and manually adjust the height of the cones or rollers based on diameters.

“The tilting is a big feature. Anytime you have tapered glass, you want a nice flat, even surface for the laser. If it is not, you will lose your focus: the intensity of the laser beam. If you lose intensity, the mark will fade away or be very distorted,” he says.

Impact Engraving

Roland DGA no longer offers rotary engravers, but its engraving equipment and impact engravers can both mark cylindrical objects.

Matt Anderson, product manager-3D solutions at Roland DGA in Irvine, Calif., says that his company discontinued its rotary engraving attachment about three years ago.

“Engraving in general has slowed a lot with the advent of lasers. They are easier to use and less expensive. That was the demise of that machine,” he says.

“With the two technologies we have, you can still do curved surfaces to an extent,” he says. “The larger the radius of the item you are doing, the more area you’ll be able to mark.”

With Roland’s software, you can enter the radius of the object being engraved and it will tell you the diameter. If you have a diameter of 4 inches, the machine can achieve a half-inch wide image, he says.

“With the exception of our base model tiny engraver, all of our engravers—the EGX-350, 400 and 600—are capable of doing 3D engraving. You can put a block of wood in there and it could do a fully three-dimensional bust of someone’s face. It will support those file types, which is something you can’t do with laser,” he says.

Impact engravers are something you don’t typically see in sign shops, but in gift kiosks in malls. On those, a shop can achieve an inch-wide logo on a cylindrical object, like a Moscow Mule copper cup.

“It is not a big image, but it is high resolution. You could impact a photo on metal, which is something you can’t achieve with a rotary engraver,” Anderson says.

Roland’s MPX-90 impact printer can impact engrave on everything from stainless steel, iron, titanium and platinum to softer substrates, like acrylic, gold, silver, copper, nickel and aluminum. That means a shop could engrave pens and stationary, medical tools and instruments, industrial plates, jewelry and pendants, trophies and awards, watches and belt buckles.

It uses a diamond-tipped stylus to strike the material with high speed and precision to reproduce very detailed designs with lots of contrast.