Tantalum?

[Chris DeGerolamo]

Has anyone had any experience engraving a metal (element) known as Tantalum?

[Dan Hintz]

Never had an opportunity to play with it myself (commonly used in capacitors of the same name), but I hope you don't have the intent to engrave it directly... your Epilog won't work.

[Michael Hunter]

Wiki says it is a good heat conductor, so as Dan says, its not going to work.

Tantalising though!

[Dan Hintz]

The fact that metals do not readily absorb the wavelength of CO2 tubes is the real issue... a fiber laser would eat it up.

[Chris DeGerolamo]

Well, the contact is coming by this afternoon either way...

Good pun Michael...

[Michael Hunter]

The plaster-of-paris trick seems to overcome the metals-not-absorbing-power-problem, but it only seems to work well on relatively non-heat-conductive stuff. Stainless steel works great, but I did not have any luck with a piece of hard aluminium.

[Chris DeGerolamo]

Yeah, me either. I'm gonna try to "vector" engrave the text even though I am doubtful it will work. I don't know if the client can have these Cermarked since the application for the discs is in the medical field.

[Dan Hintz]

You should have no (major) problems if you use Cermark. And as to your comment about them being for the medical field (implants?), Cermark is benign and has been used time and time again to mark implants (serial #s and such).

[Chris DeGerolamo]

Okay, so I tried to engrave it anyway and not even a scratch, halo...nothing. After talking with the contact, I did not even try to pursue the Cermark route since the total cost of the machined part had a comma in it...figured it would be best to not charge an arm and a leg and still have the potential to screw one up.