Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian Lamb
You know, I sound like a broken record when I post this in fiber laser threads, but we are guinea pigs in every sense of the word. :D Even the manufacturers of these things don't or won't share even baseline settings for materials. I find that to be telling in so many ways. I've basically begged for settings and can't get them!
OK, so take some of what you frosted that's not rusting, and do some annealing on the same piece and see what happens...
A description (that I read somewhere) of what's actually happening during 'annealing' (via fiber laser), is the carbon at the surface of the metal is being oxidized... if the metal is SS, this would likely compromise the rust-proofing ability of the chromium at the surface, leaving the now oxidized carbon vulnerable to rusting.
Hey, sounds good to me! :D So anneal 2 pieces of frosted silverware- then wash one in the dishwasher, and leave the other one in a pan of dish-soapy water-- I'll bet a buck the dishwasher will rust the annealing while not rusting the frosted (which still has it's chromium intact) and it'll take a year or more for the piece sitting in regular dish soap and water to rust...
Dishwasher soap will oxidize and etch aluminum oxide (aka anodizing), I'm sure it'll have no problem rusting rustable stuff! ;)
Easy solution: don't put in the dishwasher! :)
Sure they will. SPI has a lot of settings for various materials. However, you have to go high end to get their systems. What so many of us are dealing with is a lower cost unit at the expensive of support and features. Want quick answers and guidance on settings? Spend $40K on a laser. Want to take the time to have to figure everything our yourself, fix you own machine, and be limited in functionality? Then don't buy a $40K laser. How much time/money is lost chasing these issues? Answer? A lot. At $90 per hour, figuring this issue out has cost over $1000 in lost revenue already, I'm guessing (it would if it were done in my shop).Quote:
Originally Posted by Jacob John
We are lucky that SMC exists because without the crowd sourcing of tech support on this forum, many of these machines would be boat anchors (not suggesting anyone in particular, just a general comment).
I wonder what the $40K laser would cost if they stopped all their support and just let the users figure it out themselves.
About the same as the typical Chinese machine.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scott Shepherd
Probably a little better since you have much higher quality laser sources and parts instead of things that were reverse engineered around those items. Many of the remarkable things we see demonstrated on fibers are up above the 150KHz range, and most Chinese sources are capping out at 80KHz.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gary Hair
The old saying "You get what you pay for" rings very true on fiber lasers. Want access to top notch support? Spend $40K. Want to figure it out yourself? Spend $6,000, then the next 3 years dialing it in :) (yes, I'm exaggerating)
Scott, look at my sig. :) For fibers, setting recommendations are nearly non-existent, even from the big boys. My source is SPI and is a Tykma. Tykma only has an outdated pdf for some settings that isn't up to date with their software. That manual is almost 10 years old.
For CO2 lasers, your point is valid though maybe Trotec and Epilog are different and offer a ton of recommended settings for their fibers.
I'm aware of your source. However, SPI has a vast technical library that has a ton of information there. If your supplier isn't up to speed on that stuff, then they probably aren't a good supplier (at least as far as the way I rate suppliers).Quote:
Originally Posted by Jacob John
EZCAD is, as far as I understand, a pirated knock off of a western software program. They clearly didn't write the code. If they did, then they'd show that they have people fluent in English behind the scenes. If they did, you wouldn't see things like "rorate" instead of "rotate" and examples like that, that never get fixed. Someone in the western world wrote the original program, and my guess is that the people who wrote it, and offer it to manufacturers to do with their sources, know their stuff inside and out.
Fiber lasers have been around a long time. This isn't a new thing. There are many, many companies that have been doing it for a long time and really know their products. I have yet to see one them mentioned on this forum because the majority of people are looking to get a fiber laser for $6500.
Like I said, you get what you pay for. And I'm not saying anything negatively about it, just stating my opinion, as someone who's owned a fiber laser for about 3 years now and have been dealing with the EZCAD and the likes since then.
I got a call from a friend asking me if I could come look at their lasers. Two galvo fibers. I went and they were super high dollar machines. $90,000 each. I went through all the software and saw how it was working and how the flow worked, and without question, that software was superior to EZCAD. So options are out there, just not in the $10000 or less range.
Sorry I didn't see this post, Scott. My fiber is an American made system with an SPI source so I don't know if SPI specifically would share that info, though it would great if they did. Tykma does offer a manual that anyone can download with recommeded settings for a good bit of materials, but it needs to be updated. They have really good customer support, but they don't freely offer settings. You can request their help and they will help, but what I want is their comprehensive settings! :D
The CAD that they offer is not a Chinese knockoff, it's their version. I guess I'm not explaining it correctly, but I'm guessing its source code is CAD with their programming on top of it. No misspelled words or anything like that at all. It's a very user friendly piece of software. And my fiber isn't one of the cheapies, it's a US made machine with US support. I do know what you mean though.
As to the topic, I engraved another piece of SS last night and I used ZEP to scrub it, washed it with water, left it out without drying it (intentionally) and sure enough it's got rust spots. It has to be that a combo of a cleaner/degreaser along with a magic eraser cause something in the metal to be revealed and start rusting. I'm pretty safe in saying that now after marking some pieces and not cleaning other than water (no rust).
EDIT: Oh and I forgot to add the real key piece of evidence to support my theory. Areas that were not lasered have small rust spots. That means part of the cleaning process is removing the protective layer from the SS.
There's a lot of ZEP's on HD's shelves, but IF you're talking the purple stuff, which is a Castrol SuperClean knockoff, IT's likely the reason for the rust, one of it's main cleaning/degreasing agents is sodium hydroxide, aka Lye...Quote:
Originally Posted by Jacob John
Best check for stainless steel is with a magnetic. High grade stainless won't attract a magnetic and won't rust. If it attracts a magnetic it will rust have to put on a protective coating to provent it from rusting.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dominic Notaro
I'd disagree with just about all of that. There is no such thing as "high grade stainless". Certainly the 400 series (magnetic) is considered anything but low grade and used to make a lot of very high end products. You can make most all stainless steels rust. They are prone to rust when oxygen is taking away from them. When freshly scratched, stainless is open to rusting until it "heals" itself with the protective skin it has on it.
Stainless isn't rust free, it's rust resistant. Two totally different things.
Since the thread was bumped, the SS I engraved and have left in my dishwasher for a week now shows no signs of rust at all (not ZEP cleaned).
The ZEP 505 cleaned pieces are rusting like crazy. So I think it's definitely the ZEP though here's a curious question. Why is it recommended for those powder coated tumblers after engraving? I don't have any issues with those.