Many people are creating beautiful painted rocks and stones and placing for people in their communities to find.  We decided to do the same but with our lasers.  Below you will find some of the stones that we have created.  If you’re lucky enough to find one of our stones please share it and tag us on Facebook or Instagram or @BlastedByLight.

Now for the science part.  Rock are made of grains of various minerals.  When using a laser on them various effects can be achieved from light to dark marks, and deep or shallow.  The dark marks are formed through a process called vitrification where the minerals are heated to a melting point where they glassify.  In some of the pictures you will notice a smooth shiny wet look to the engraved area, this is the glassified mineral in the stone.  White marks are formed through high speed passes that have a clearing effect on the stones surface.  Not all rocks mark the same.  Sandstone doesn’t vitrify and easily marks white.  River rocks vary a lot but are pretty easy to get a nice black mark.  On one of the Kokopelli stones, I deep engraved it and then vitrified the shallow spot.  You can see the Arizona next to it that raised up from the surface.  These stones were all done with our Fiber laser but Co2 laser can also engrave stone, it just takes longer with some different effects.