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Phil Horne
11-30-2012, 12:01 AM
Im not sure how you wold accomplish this with a laser but they are some how... I was wondering if anyone knew how they do it?
It looks like this company uses a yag laser?

I didnt think it was possible to do what they are doing with polymer's. They have a few other videos that actually show something being lasered but for th elife of me I cant figure out how they pull this particular trick off.


http://youtu.be/-6-nTH8p7cw

Phil

Ronald Erickson
11-30-2012, 12:14 AM
It was talked about in this thread:

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?193570-digi-camo

Rich Harman
11-30-2012, 12:21 AM
Hydrographics.

Phil Horne
11-30-2012, 1:45 PM
Thanks for the link to the other thread.. I guess I should have tried a little searching around.

James Brown 1
03-18-2013, 4:45 AM
http://www.EZdipkits.com/

Martin Boekers
03-18-2013, 10:27 AM
I think it may be a bit deceptive on their part...... maybe the laser was used in cutting the "liquid decal" as this is a photo I found on their web page and I have never seen a laser be able to engrave the tops and sides as this is shown...esp for under $25!

http://sureshotprecision.com/webstore/index.php?route=product/product&path=66_69&product_id=70

Joe Hillmann
03-18-2013, 11:07 AM
I would assume they use a yag laser, no decals involved. The plastic used on my guns engrave anywhere from black to white to gold depending on power. Also, with a galvo head the beam always comes from the same point and the farther from the center you are the greater the angle is which means they don't need to use any type of template to get it to warp all the way around. They just mark a patten that is larger than the part and once it gets over the edge it no longer marks. Whereas with a flying head laser (like on mostCo2's ) when you get to the edge the engraving would be very sloppy around the edges unless you had perfect placement and a file that matched the the shape of the part.

If you look at the photos that show the narrow sides of the magazines, the pattern on the faces don't match up at the corner but they also don't bleed past each other as they would on a CO2. Also due to the size of the mags they are using a long focal length lens which also allows them to do curved mags without running out of focus.

Once you had your patterns made it would only take a minuet or two per side to engrave the mags.

You can also see the laser marks in the lightest areas of the engraving.

Martin Boekers
03-18-2013, 12:42 PM
Here is a photo off the page that says it's laser, I have a hard time seeing the laser do these sides easily.

Phil Horne
03-18-2013, 12:53 PM
Just like Joe said, it was not done with a CO2 laser. I have actually seen it done at this point... Now its time to save money for a Fiber/Yag laser!

Phil

Joe Hillmann
03-18-2013, 1:46 PM
Here is a photo off the page that says it's laser, I have a hard time seeing the laser do these sides easily.

It would be nice if they had better pictures of how the corners meet up. You have to keep in mind that they are using a galvo yag or fiber the geometry of where the beam comes from is totally different then a CO2. Depending on where you have your part placed you can over shoot a corner and the vertical side wont be touched. Or if you put the piece so it is not centered you can do a vertical side and a horizontal side all at once. Neither of those operations are possible with flying head.

Joe Hillmann
03-18-2013, 2:08 PM
I just did a test and it looks like in order for the corners to turn out even I need to have some type of stop on the y axis due the slightly rounded corners.

Dee Gallo
03-18-2013, 3:13 PM
Maybe they have a remote controlled rotary device they can use to turn the piece 90 degrees when they want to while the laser is firing...

Martin Boekers
03-18-2013, 3:32 PM
They must have something and that's why they won't show the engraving. I guess I didn't look close enough to the Fiber (Epilog) as it looked the same as CO2. Will have to ask questions at the NBM Indy show. Playing with lasers for over 7 years and still so much to learn. Thanks Joe for pointing out some differences!

It just amazes me that they figured out a way to do this on a variety of recivers for only $25 amazing.

Dee you may be right, they may have designed their own rotation device. Something like the girl from Germany did (laser origami)
I plan on bringing this image to Indy and see what others think on the process.

Joe, a question on YAG and Fiber lasers. Are they more similar are different? Do they give similar results?

Thanks for a bit of training here!

Dan Hintz
03-19-2013, 8:29 AM
Dee you may be right, they may have designed their own rotation device.

Maybe, maybe not. I'm not going to say if they use one at all or not, but plenty of laser systems on the market are multi-axis. Miyachi Unitek makes 4- and 5-axis machines for a not-too-terrible cost (for fiber machines), and all is required is a 3D model of the item to get a perfectly focused beam the entire way around.

Martin Boekers
03-19-2013, 9:44 AM
They don't charge very much for engraving, even with a specialized laser.


Actually I am think about sending them a piece just to see it... :)

Joe Hillmann
03-19-2013, 11:08 AM
They must have something and that's why they won't show the engraving. I guess I didn't look close enough to the Fiber (Epilog) as it looked the same as CO2. Will have to ask questions at the NBM Indy show. Playing with lasers for over 7 years and still so much to learn. Thanks Joe for pointing out some differences!

It just amazes me that they figured out a way to do this on a variety of recivers for only $25 amazing.

Dee you may be right, they may have designed their own rotation device. Something like the girl from Germany did (laser origami)
I plan on bringing this image to Indy and see what others think on the process.

Joe, a question on YAG and Fiber lasers. Are they more similar are different? Do they give similar results?

Thanks for a bit of training here!


When I bought my second yag fiber lasers were beginning to replace yags. From what I understand they both mark the same materials and both have a 1064nm wavelength. (CO2 is 10640 nm). I think for the most part fiber has replaced yag on the new market (there is still a market for reconditioned used yags) The reason for that is, they are now cheaper, more dependable, fewer parts they are also smaller sizes for the same wattage.

Also the old yags were lamp pumped but lamps were short lived, something like 500 hours before they had to be replaced, then they went to diode pumped which lasts thousands and thousands of hours. If I remember the fiber lasers use something else that is even more dependable. I also think the fiber lasers are air cooled which makes them smaller as well.

Maybe Matthew Knott will will chime in, he knows more about yags than anyone here.

Dan Hintz
03-19-2013, 3:09 PM
I think for the most part fiber has replaced yag on the new market (there is still a market for reconditioned used yags) The reason for that is, they are now cheaper, more dependable, fewer parts they are also smaller sizes for the same wattage.

Also the old yags were lamp pumped but lamps were short lived, something like 500 hours before they had to be replaced, then they went to diode pumped which lasts thousands and thousands of hours. If I remember the fiber lasers use something else that is even more dependable. I also think the fiber lasers are air cooled which makes them smaller as well.

YAG is generally cheaper up front, but the lamp replacement costs (500-1,000 hours), lower wall-plug efficiency, etc. makes fiber a better long-term investment.

Joe Hillmann
03-19-2013, 4:13 PM
Dan,

They made yags that were lamp pumped which lasted the 500- 1000 hours and you had to replace them before they burned out or bad things could happen, and they also make yags that are diode pumped which last tens of thousands of hours and if they burn out it isn't dangerous like it can be in the lamp pumped.

I am not sure how the fiber lasers are pumped but I think they are diode and the glass fiber replaces the laser tube on yags.

Dan Hintz
03-19-2013, 4:31 PM
They made yags that were lamp pumped which lasted the 500- 1000 hours and you had to replace them before they burned out or bad things could happen

I fail to see how a lamp burning out can be bad (other than needing to replace the lamp)... it's a photon source, just like in rube rod lasers and such. Flashlamp goes belly up, no more photons, no more lasing, but you can't hurt the machine.

Diode pumped is always going to be better from a lifetime and efficiency perspective (assuming the substrate is kept within proper temp range... this is usually done with thermo-electric coolers, TECs). LEDs (visible) are usually rated for 70-100k hours, but laser diodes are usually pushed harder than typical visible LEDs, so the lifetime is shortened... even so, the machine's ROI is significantly higher, and having a machine that reliably lases for many years without major maintenance is a good feeling.

With fiber, the fiber itself is the pumping/amplifying medium... light of one frequency goes into one end, and the coatings baked into the fiber during the drawing phase change the frequency and amplify the power. Longer the fiber, the more power you get out of the end (within reason... at some point, the attenuation through the fiber adds up and power starts to drop again, not to mention the heat build up in the fiber). The output of the amplifying fiber is attached to the delivery fiber. The delivery fiber doesn't amplify any longer, but it offers a low-loss passage of the high-wattage laser to your substrate (or focusing optics).

Hope that helps...

Joe Hillmann
03-19-2013, 5:04 PM
From what I have read after x amount of hours they become much more likely to explode but since mine aren't lamp pumped I didn't really pay to much attention so I may be wrong, but I do know my laser had the software for a lamp pumped system and unless I changed the hours when I installed the software it was set up to give a warning at 500 hours, shut down at 510 hours and then only run for one hour before automatically shutting down. I assume the reason for that was you could still run the laser after 500 hours but if something happens after that there is no way you can claim you didn't know something was wrong.

matthew knott
03-19-2013, 5:55 PM
Impressed by you guys knowledge !! Joe is quite correct, the lamps don't just go out, mores the pity, they are arc lamps and have no filament, when they go they go bang, if your lucky it will just blow into 2 bits, you can pull out either end and stick in a new one. What normally happens is it blows the flow tube (PYREX tube), then you have a laser cavity full of a million bit of broken glass, the laser head has to be stripped down and a new tube has to be fitted! What happens next is the Yag rod gets broken during stripping and then its all got expensive. Also the laser would need to be re-aligned and you need special kit. I've seen lamps last 2000 hours, i've all seen them last 2 minutes, bit of a lottery but 500 hours is not a bad target to aim for. My old company made big bucks from sending engineers out to fix lasers with broken lamps, personally and this is bad we don't monitor the hours, we wait for them to go bang, I can rebuild and fix a laser cavity in 10 minutes and we get about 1500 hours so it works for us!
Fiber Lasers still use a diode to pump the gain medium, these don't last forever and it will normally be the thing that stop the fiber laser working, but they do last along time, prices are coming down all the time, I good 10 watt galvo( this would do better work than a 40 watt yag in most cases) can be purchased for $20'000 usd so they have pretty much killed yag lasers. We have 3 fibers and love them, much better than the yags (except on copper), we plan on selling off another YAG cheap as we need the space to get another fiber in, ebay here we come !!

As a PS you're all spelling fiber wrong it FIBRE, but then you cant spell colour or centre so who cares ;)

matthew knott
03-19-2013, 6:20 PM
Impressed by you guys knowledge !! Joe is quite correct, the lamps don't just go out, mores the pity, they are arc lamps and have no filament, when they go they go bang, if your lucky it will just blow into 2 bits, you can pull out either end and stick in a new one. What normally happens is it blows the flow tube (PYREX tube), then you have a laser cavity full of a million bit of broken glass, the laser head has to be stripped down and a new tube has to be fitted! What happens next is the Yag rod gets broken during stripping and then its all got expensive. Also the laser would need to be re-aligned and you need special kit. I've seen lamps last 2000 hours, i've all seen them last 2 minutes, bit of a lottery but 500 hours is not a bad target to aim for. My old company made big bucks from sending engineers out to fix lasers with broken lamps, personally and this is bad we don't monitor the hours, we wait for them to go bang, I can rebuild and fix a laser cavity in 10 minutes and we get about 1500 hours so it works for us!
Fiber Lasers still use a diode to pump the gain medium, these don't last forever and it will normally be the thing that stop the fiber laser working, but they do last along time, prices are coming down all the time, I good 10 watt galvo( this would do better work than a 40 watt yag in most cases) can be purchased for $20'000 usd so they have pretty much killed yag lasers. We have 3 fibers and love them, much better than the yags (except on copper), we plan on selling off another YAG cheap as we need the space to get another fiber in, ebay here we come !!

As a PS you're all spelling fiber wrong it FIBRE, but then you cant spell colour or centre so who cares ;)

Dan Hintz
03-20-2013, 6:27 AM
they are arc lamps and have no filament, when they go they go bang
TIL :) I had no idea they blew so catastrophically... makes sense, then...

As a PS you're all spelling fiber wrong it FIBRE, but then you cant spell colour or centre so who cares ;)
Says the man who adds extra vowels to his metals (it's aluminum, not aluminium)... ;)