Aluminum Settings?

[Aaron Reimer]

Now that I've got the laser running, I tried burning some samples I got of anodized dog tags. I'm having trouble finding good settings that come clear and don't burn right through to the metal when they supposedly burn bright white. Any advice?

Also, I have a friend that wants me to do his ipod, but the tags are getting pretty hot and I don't want to fry it. Any suggestions on that?

Thanks for the help!

Edit: It's a chinese 40w CO2 engraver

[Michael Hunter]

On my 60W Epilog I use 75% Speed, 22% Power, 1200dpi for "normal" work.
For very fine detail/text, I up the power to 30 or 35%, but this risks blasting away to bare metal on larger areas of engraving.

Aluminium always comes out of my machine absolutely cold.

[Richard Rumancik]

Black anodized aluminum will not always laser bright white. It will vary from silver-grey to white depending on the alloy and anodizing process, (as well as ppi, beam size, focus etc.)

If your tags are getting hot and you are seeing silver aluminum then it would seem that your heat is much too high. Reduce power and/or increase speed and see what happens. You can make a test file to optimize this - maybe just use a black filled rectangle to make a raster "bar" say .10" high x 1.00" long. Then do a test, move the image, change settings, retest, etc. till you find a setting that works.

[Aaron Reimer]

Thanks for the help, I'll give it a try!

[Eric Allen]

Is that a 40 IPM machine?

[Aaron Reimer]

Is that a 40 IPM machine?

It's advertised top speed was 7ips, but I don't know if it's realistic or not.