John Kleiber
10-27-2016, 5:08 PM
Yesterday I ran a anneal job which consisted of (2) 5' Long x 3/4" Thick x 3" Wide Stainless Steel (donor/in honor of type) hand rails. Problem is there were existing annealed boxes and names on the rails....and lots more needed to be added.
I got the job because the other engravers fiber had failed. Unfortunately no one knows any of the power, speed or kHz settings the engraver used originally. To be honest, I don't think the original engraver does either.
I tried roughly 100 tests on various stainless scrap and even a brushed stainless plate similar to the rails. I finally got it close enough that when looking at the annealing head-on, it matched the original.
The problem was however that when the annealing is viewed from different angles and depending on light source the look would change. Compounding the problem, I am 100% sure each rail was annealed using different settings because the annealing is sharper on one rail and it has a similar look when viewed from an angle like our annealing.
I looked via our microscope the other annealing and the letters were, really nasty looking, while the annealing we performed was sharp.
I concluded that possibly the laser the other guy was using had some sort of failure going on. I never could make my annealing as crappy as theirs.
Theirs 346481
Ours 346482
Once they are installed, there is a substantial amount of light from a solid glass wall. Natural light seems to offer the best results.
346484346485346486
I got the job because the other engravers fiber had failed. Unfortunately no one knows any of the power, speed or kHz settings the engraver used originally. To be honest, I don't think the original engraver does either.
I tried roughly 100 tests on various stainless scrap and even a brushed stainless plate similar to the rails. I finally got it close enough that when looking at the annealing head-on, it matched the original.
The problem was however that when the annealing is viewed from different angles and depending on light source the look would change. Compounding the problem, I am 100% sure each rail was annealed using different settings because the annealing is sharper on one rail and it has a similar look when viewed from an angle like our annealing.
I looked via our microscope the other annealing and the letters were, really nasty looking, while the annealing we performed was sharp.
I concluded that possibly the laser the other guy was using had some sort of failure going on. I never could make my annealing as crappy as theirs.
Theirs 346481
Ours 346482
Once they are installed, there is a substantial amount of light from a solid glass wall. Natural light seems to offer the best results.
346484346485346486