Settings for Lasermax Rowmark

[Kasey Maxwell]

Hi guys, I just got some Lasermax Rowmark Brushed Gold/Black 2PLY 1/8" for making name badges for someone, This is the 1st time I have used it so I was wondering if anyone here has used it, am I supposed to gently engrave it to remove the gold to reveal the black or should I go deep to remove the plastic below ?

Thanks

[Mike Null]

Kasey

Just remove the surface layer. Using more power and going deeper will generally produce less sharply defined images. Experiment just a little to find the right setting.

I do not use 1/8" for name tags as I feel it is too heavy and offers no other advantage.

[Randy Digby]

On my 30 watt Speedy 100, I use 75p and 50s and actually make two passes to get rid of the residue in the engraved portion on materials that have white text. One pass on material with black text. I also coat the entire sheet with a light coat of dish washing detergent prior to cutting/engraving, which is pretty common I believe. I only use 1/16" material but that would not affect engraving settings.

[Mike Null]

Randy

I view the idea of dishwasher detergent on a whole sheet of plastic a total waste of time. If you're having a problem cleaning up residue use the Mr Clean magic erasers. They're fast, cheap and efficient. And you only clean what needs to be cleaned.

[Randy Digby]

I understand Mike. We all work into methods that work best for our own applications. I do a lot of tags the same size, so I lightly soap a full sheet of material and then cut up the entire sheet, which for my application, yields 73 pieces. I then store the various colors 910 standard colors) in a small drawer type storage cabinet. When I engrave an order, I can then mix tag colors on the bed and engrave many tags and many colors at the same time. We enter the tag data into Excel and dump the data into the tag design in EngraveLab. The tags are still coated with the thin layer of soap from the cutting process, so when I finish the engraving process I dump them into the sink and give them a quick rinse. Only the yellow and white tags will sometimes need a little touch with the magic eraser along the cut edges. I probably use less than 1/2 teaspoon soap on a 12" x 24" sheet and I prefer this method to engrave and scrub all, which I have also tried. I learned about the Magic Eraser here and that was a wonderful tool to learn.

[Mike Null]

Randy

I stand corrected. I've not heard of doing tags like that but your method makes sense.

How do you get them to register correctly?

[Randy Digby]

Not remembering all of the numbers exactly, but my basic tag is 1" x 3" with radius corners and a hole. I cut the tags out to those dimensions, did a full table layout and measured for overall dimensions. So if 10 tags stacked in the 1" dimension came out to .060" under the 10" (or .006" per tag in this case), then I made a new template for the actual engraving based on a tag of .994" wide in the 1" dimension of the tag. Same for the 3" dimension based on 7 tags staked end to end. Bottom line is that it works great and has been a real time saver vs. when we would engrave and cut at the same time on one color of material.

It eliminates having stacks of partially used sheet where in the pass we may need 17 tags but material left for 14 tags on a sheet. Do you grab a new sheet or set up for multiple cuts? Now we don't have to decide, we just stack the plates and engrave.

[Mike Null]

Coincidentally that's the same configuration as most of my name tags, without the hole, but my quantities vary from 10 to 200. I get 77 per sheet but I do have to cope with the partial sheets. I use .030" stock for my highest volume tags and have never been comfortable with using templates for these. I offer these in only 3 color combinations so my scrap problem would not be as serious as yours with so many colors.

But I like your solution to your problem--sorry to have jumped to judgment so quickly.

[Randy Digby]

No problem. PM sent.