First white knuckle job with the fiber

[Kev Williams]

One of my long time customers is a family owned mall (and now internet) based clock & watch shop. About once a month they refurbish someone's old watch, which includes the back. They take pics of the original, then sand a refinish the back, removing most or all of the original wording in the process.

Then they bring the pics and refinished back to me. My job is to reproduce the back to as close to original as possible. After working with the text and such to match, normally I'll use my IS400 and a non-rotating diamond tool for the engraving. I have a single line normal block font that doubles-back over itself so the results are pretty good.

So last week they drop off a back, and THIS picture: (I've covered the SN just in case)
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Well, this goes a bit beyond what I'd consider 'close to original' that I could accomplish with a diamond tool!

Now, I could reproduce and engrave it with a diamond, outlining the circles and engraving the text to match, and it would look good, and they'd love it that way--

But I thought this would be a good experiment with the new fiber laser...

First thing I did was look up the "Rado" logo, and find out this is a Swiss watch. A little more research found that they're not all that expensive...,

Still, someone cares enough about it to pay to have it refurbished, so --

--That's where the white knuckles come into play. I only get one shot at it, and as of yet, I haven't found a suitable fiber version of painters tape for test runs.

For that matter, I haven't much chance to do many "runs", let alone test runs.

No mistakes. Must be centered up good. Must look as close to the pic as possible when I'm done...

So I grab some smalll pieces of SS and start test running...

Not enough power...
Too much power...
Too dark...
etc etc.. ;) ... part of the fun!

But I hit on some settings that did what I wanted. BUT- the hatch routine was messing things up. Because at certain points the hatch filling changed directions. If running bottom-up, nearl the end it would reverse and move top-down. And the hatch lines caught the light totally different. The one direction would appear glossier than the other. Looked great except for the mismatched lines. Frustrating...

BUT, I finally hit on the right hatching I needed to get what I wanted. :)

Even then, I actually ended up engraving the back about 6 times.

The whole process took me about 3 hours, which I'll never get paid for, but I'm still learning how to use the thing.

And in the end, it turned out better than I ever expected! Amazing machine.... :D




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[Gary Hair]

Your work looks better than the original! Well done!!

As for the hatch - I'll take a screen shot tomorrow if I remember, they are a bit hard to describe. But, the one you want for fastest speed is the one that gives you the weird patterns sometimes. Most often it's in larger areas of hatch and it's always in the most noticeable spot... that hatch is blue lines that go left and right and are connected vertically on the ends - should be all solid blue. The one that will do a great job and not leave the patters is blue left and right and connected by red diagonal lines. It's painfully slow vs the other one but always gives a good mark without any patterning.

[David Somers]

Very Cool Kev!! Nice job!

[Kev Williams]

Yeah, it was the painfully slow hatch that worked- that's the hatch that only fires the laser in one direction so the time is doubled. But it was the only one that just ran up the hill the whole way start to finish...

For a one-piece job, the wait is worth it!

Here's one of my test pieces, in the first pic, the mismatch is only barely noticeable, but rotated so the light hits it a different way, and it's bad!
Most of the hatch ran up, the darker areas are when it ran down...
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Didnt' matter the angle of the hatch, it followed the same path.

Lots to learn still! :)

[Neville Stewart]

One of my long time customers is a family owned mall (and now internet) based clock & watch shop. About once a month they refurbish someone's old watch, which includes the back. They take pics of the original, then sand a refinish the back, removing most or all of the original wording in the process.

Then they bring the pics and refinished back to me. My job is to reproduce the back to as close to original as possible. After working with the text and such to match, normally I'll use my IS400 and a non-rotating diamond tool for the engraving. I have a single line normal block font that doubles-back over itself so the results are pretty good.

So last week they drop off a back, and THIS picture: (I've covered the SN just in case)
341192

Well, this goes a bit beyond what I'd consider 'close to original' that I could accomplish with a diamond tool!

Now, I could reproduce and engrave it with a diamond, outlining the circles and engraving the text to match, and it would look good, and they'd love it that way--

But I thought this would be a good experiment with the new fiber laser...

First thing I did was look up the "Rado" logo, and find out this is a Swiss watch. A little more research found that they're not all that expensive...,

Still, someone cares enough about it to pay to have it refurbished, so --

--That's where the white knuckles come into play. I only get one shot at it, and as of yet, I haven't found a suitable fiber version of painters tape for test runs.

For that matter, I haven't much chance to do many "runs", let alone test runs.

No mistakes. Must be centered up good. Must look as close to the pic as possible when I'm done...

So I grab some smalll pieces of SS and start test running...

Not enough power...
Too much power...
Too dark...
etc etc.. ;) ... part of the fun!

But I hit on some settings that did what I wanted. BUT- the hatch routine was messing things up. Because at certain points the hatch filling changed directions. If running bottom-up, nearl the end it would reverse and move top-down. And the hatch lines caught the light totally different. The one direction would appear glossier than the other. Looked great except for the mismatched lines. Frustrating...

BUT, I finally hit on the right hatching I needed to get what I wanted. :)

Even then, I actually ended up engraving the back about 6 times.

The whole process took me about 3 hours, which I'll never get paid for, but I'm still learning how to use the thing.

And in the end, it turned out better than I ever expected! Amazing machine.... :D




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That's the continuous hatch. It good for enclosed objects, but if it need to jump to the next pec it will and it won't be uniform. It's the comp version of an efficient path but it's terrible. Select interrupted ( blue & red ). You can thank Gary hair for that info.

[Rodne Gold]

so you wanted a sandblast type effect..
The RADO etc is the polished background showing through?
You havent re-engraved the RADO and text to be black?

[Kev Williams]

Exactly, the text is simply standing in relief, untouched by the laser.

And I really must connect up a different computer to run the machine from- it came with a laptop but I hate laptops. It's a good enough machine but it's small, the screen is only 14" diagonally- the 'red and blue' hatches you're all referring to, I can't even tell what colors they are because they're so small! Only color I see is the blue island fill!

And does anyone have any connections to EZcad, as in, who's idea was it to put the "light" key and the "start" key right next to each other? The start key should WAY over on the right side, like F12, OR be a TWO-key sequence, like alt-X, which are close enough together you don't need 2 hands-- With the F2 start key being next the F1 key, and it's also just as close to the basic keyboard numbers on this laptop, I've already lost count on how many times I've accidentally started the laser running by trying to type a "2" or turn the red box on! I had to change my new-job default setting to zero power, that's helped! I believe there's ways to disable keys, but I don't know how to do that... Just need a regular computer with a regular keyboard and nice 23" or so screen :)