15 years of CO2 Lasers

[mike wallis]

Hello all,
After 15 years of only using CO2 lasers I'm finding that we are going to be needing a Galvo Fiber Laser soon. I've done a bit a research but was hoping you guys could give me some feedback on brands to look at and brands not to look at. We will be etching mainly photographs and text on 1/16" stainless steel and solid brass. Below are a few items on my wish list....

1. It needs to be reliable with tech support and parts readily available.
2. Would like to be able to engrave a 11.5X11.5" area.
3. Something under $20,000 would be nice.
4. Enough power to be be profitable but not to much that it's over kill.
5. A nice black mark on stainless and brass.

Thanks for any help guys.
Mike Wallis

[Kev Williams]

I'm usually the LAST person to use the words "do a search", but for this subject, I recommend an 'advanced search' using the words 'fiber black stainless', you'll catch a lot of threads with some good discussion on marking metals black with a fiber, how to and what to expect--

My reasoning is because etching to black with a fiber can be a frustratingly slow process and there's a lot of good info about it archived...

[Gary Hair]

I don't believe that $20k will get you a machine capable of 11.5" x 11.5" that will make a black mark on stainless steel in any reasonable amount of time, especially one that satisfies your first criteria - it will have to be a Chinese import and although they are fairly reliable, you won't get tech support or readily available parts from China. For the same working area you could use a co2 with Cermark and do it in a fraction of the time and get more reliably black marks.

[John Lifer]

and bitmap engraving on stainless steel will be SLOW, very SLOW, especially large items.. Little 2x2 pictures take minutes

[Tim Bateson]

I know you"think" you want a Fiber to do this kind of work, but it may be the wrong tool for the job. I suggest you travel to someone nearby that owns a fiber & observe. Fiber Black marking is more superior to CerMark in some ways & inferior in other ways. It's a trade off, so you may want to see it done and see the results.

[Kev Williams]

There's several ways to get SS black with a fiber, annealing is really cool and very popular with the knife/sword/medical supply customers--

Another way is the 'get it as black as you can as fast as possible' way, similar to getting aluminum dark; the problem I have is getting beyond the dark brown tinge to 'mostly' black... I have 2 industrial customers, one where I Cermark dial scale markings on SS they provide, the other I Cermark ID info on SS flow restricters. Both of these customers I provided one job where I used the fiber to do the black. The jobs turned out nice, but both customers noticed the change, asked what I did different, and both said 'do it the old way please!' - I didn't bother seeing if they'd like the annealed version, simply because I'm afraid they WOULD like it; the extra engraving time would kill me ;)

Cermark will always be on my shelf I'm afraid... :)

[mike wallis]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I totally get it. Fibers are just not a good fit for some applications. A few years back I wanted to replace doing Thermark on larger stainless pieces (12x12" and up) with a fiber. I had a couple of companies to some samples an it was took to much time and would not be feasible. With smaller stainless pieces (mostly 10x10" or smaller) I figured it would be a better option compared to the Theramark. Theramark requires prep time, engraving time and clean up. On top of that I find many customers like the idea of an engraved plate vs a printed plate.
I would be ok with a dark brown tone if that is all it is capable of but I have seen many samples from Epilog and Trotec that shows it being more of a black. Is black really hard to achive with the fibers?