New to fiber lasering on stainless steel

[ian mcfarland]

How do you guys strip the browning from your deep engrave on your 30watt fiber machines.

Do you use the laser with higher frequency and power or do you do it manually by hand.

Looking for a way to do it without scrubbing the area around the engraving.

[John Lifer]

Deep engraving? Use a cleaning pass. On edges, I tend to wash off. or minimally wipe off with damp cloth.

[ian mcfarland]

What are your settings you use for this??

[John Kleiber]

The "brown" residue is a result of the engraving. If you want it clean and free of the residue, you'll need to clean it.

-John

[Kev Williams]

My answer: you don't. I routinely deep engrave SS ID plates. To get it reasonably deep within a reasonable time period, the residue and metal darkens from the heat. Some of the dark is the result of the carbon in the metal oxidizing, same as what happens during low & slow annealing. The oxidizing penetrates the metal to the point you have to engrave deeper to get past the oxidation, but to engrave deeper requires more than 'clean up' passes, which means more oxidation... Catch-22 ;)

Try as I might, my cleanup passes get the engraving to a yellow-white, but always with brown edges- which could maybe be cleaned up with a few offset passes, but I've never spent much time trying, and I've come to the conclusion my fiber will never emulate the nice bright look of 'deep' (.002" or more) rotary tool engraving, so I have simply 'embraced the brown'. My customers don't mind, and actually like the contrasting color...

[Tim Bateson]

Agree. Most customers like that there is some contrast. Otherwise even deep engraving can be hard to read.