Engraving before chrome plating

[Joe Hillmann]

There is a local company that restores high end cars and one of the common problems they have is trying to match engraving when they strip chrome off of the parts. To get all the pitting out they end up buffing out the engraving so once they send the part out to be copper plated they bring it to me to match the original engraving and once it has been engraved they send it back out to be nickle and chrome plated and my engraving shows through. The engraving is done with a yag so this information wont be useful to to many people here but for those who do have a yag it is a trick worth knowing.

[Bruce Volden]

What, no pic's???

Bruce

[Joe Hillmann]

Haven't got that far yet.

[Joe Hillmann]

The first picture shows what I am trying to copy from the original, by the time they straighten it all back out it stamp would disappear, the second photo is after 400 passes and the third shows 600 passes, the last 100 passes are not necessary, somewhere in the last 100 passes the copper begins to burn and the engraving no longer gets deeper.

231556231557231558

[matthew knott]

Thats a lot of passes Joe, are you using the electrox? you really need to try the 160mm lens, on a newish fiber i would expect that to take less than a minute, certainly so deep plating would not cover it. Have you tried the wobble feature, it basically wobbles the laser beam around in a small circle, hence you get a programable line width and if you run it slow it goes deep in one pass.

[Joe Hillmann]

That is with the electrox and wobble, 200 passes with the wobble at .020, 200 with the wobble at .015, and 200 with no wobble to try and make it slope in. That is with a power at 95, frequency at 1 speed at 2 inches per minute. If I end up doing much work for this company I think I will end up getting a different lens.

[matthew knott]

I think your Hans lens will fit, well ours does anyway, not much point in running the frequency at 1khz, its to low, i think the peak power is it about 4khz (biggest pulses) so running at 1 just means your wasting power try 4khz or maybe higher for better results.

[Joe Hillmann]

I tend to run at either 1 or 8 Hertz, from what I had read I was thought the lower the hertz the stronger the pulse, I will give 4 Hertz a try an see what happens.

[matthew knott]

I think your Hans lens will fit, well ours does anyway, not much point in running the frequency at 1khz, its to low, i think the peak power is it about 4khz (biggest pulses) so running at 1 just means your wasting power try 4khz or maybe higher for better results.