Bad weather and laser.

[Joe Hillmann]

I just put the headlight for a very high end car restoration ($2500.00 for one light) in the laser and started engraving it. It will take about an hour to engrave and it is one of those jobs that you start to sweat as you push the start button because screwing it up just isn't an option. About ten minutes into the engraving it started to thunder and lightening like crazy. So now I am just really hoping the power doesn't go out for at least another hour so I can get it done without any problems. Wish me luck.

[matthew knott]

Good luck, show us a photo when your finished!!

[Dave Rust]

Yes... Good Luck!!!!!

Post the results, I've never seen a $2500 headlight

[john banks]

He's crying into his coffee and trying to align up the job to finish it ;)

I hope not! Pics pls!

[Martin Boekers]

Hope the lights don't go out! :)

[Joe Hillmann]

Engraving on copper plated headlight (I was told not to even wipe it down once it came out of the laser, they didn't want to take any chances of scratching it)
241449
view of entire headlight in my very fancy jig.
241450
A test piece of copper I engraved and then had chrome plated, this is what the headlights will look like when done.
241451

Edit: It is a headlight off an Auburn 1 ( http://www.midamericaauctions.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/1936-auburn-boat-tail-roadster-peddle-car-1-30192.jpg) that a local company is doing a very high end restoration on. The lights needed to be rechromed but to rechrome it they needed to buff of the factory markings and wanted me to reproduce the markings as close as possible. If you look real close one of the A's is different from the rest because on the original factory stamp one of the A's wasn't perfect and they wanted it copied as close as I could.

[Scott Shepherd]

Cool job, but that took 1 hour to engrave?

[Joe Hillmann]

Yep, 200 passes at 1 inch per second, just under one hour. According to Matthew Knott if I had a different lens I could have done it in a couple minutes, but since this is the only job I have done that required that much power density, I haven't found a different lens to be worthwhile.

[Martin Boekers]

Wow, you have some ***** there! quite the jig for 200 passes on such a piece. Glad it all worked out for
you! I'm sure you are breathing a little easier now. :)

[matthew knott]

Looking good !! If the power had gone out it should have been ok just to turn the machine back on, it will still all line up ok.
With a more gutsy laser and a shorter lens i think you could do that in about 5 minutes, but as you say there is no point as its a one off, and your lens would give a better depth of field so maybe it was the better way (with the equipmet you have).
We did a simular thing on a Nazi WW2 knfie, the original marking had been all but polished of so we had to scan an original and get it line up with the old mark, i didnt think it would work, but the results where so go the customer could not tell the dif between them, some people collect this type of odd thing and we estimated that it added about $200 of value to have original marking. Seemed pretty underhand to me but i guess its none of my business.

[Mark Ross]

Not to be a smarty pants, but I hope that the wording matches the original. There is no space in the word headlamp. This is one of those jobs I would check the spelling a dozen times and still have someone check! Good job.

[Randy Digby]

I've had to interrupt one long job due to weather. One of those summer boomers popped up out of nowhere. I had questioned my salesman about this when he did the install and so I followed his simple advice. I normally engrave from the bottom up. I had interrupted the job about half way through and when I powered everything back up, I restarted the job from the top and when the laser reached the already engraved portion, I interrupted the job. I could not tell the job was not completed in a normal manner and I didn't have part of the job engraved with two passes and part with one.