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Thread: Success with Cermark 6000 on generic Brass items

  1. #1

    Success with Cermark 6000 on generic Brass items

    After a great amount of reading and subsequent experiments, I came to a happy spot on laser marking some Brass Compasses for a customer. I felt I'd share, so that anyone in my situation might steam-line their experimenting. (I'd also appreciate to hear how you would price this project as well?)
    The product is a simple Brass compass imported from china. I can not say if they are coated or not. I can say that I only cleaned the tops with alcohol, sprayed the can cermark 6000 as a light coat and then ran through the laser with the following settings.
    Epilog Legend 36EXT 75watt (Note, I was told this is a 75 watt, but I do not know how to verify the exact wattage)
    Power 100%
    Speed 15%
    DPI 1200

    After experimenting with many settings, this one stuck and with decent results imho.

    Hope this helps anyone in a similar situation. Feel free to ask any questions, I may have missed. Also, if you have a pricing thought, I ran this same logo on 9 of the same items. Took abut 5 minutes each (obviously I spent most of my time in trial and error).

    Thanks
    IMG_0003.jpg

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    North Yorkshire, UK
    Posts
    465
    i have had mixed results with brass, engravers brass is fantastic, however oddball things (perhaps like a compass) can be hit and miss. In fact, I won’t even touch them unless I can have a sample to trial.
    I don’t mean to be too critical, but I would not have been pleased with that outcome, the lines appear not to be clean and well defined, but then having said that, I have made a right blooper this week on a customers item (having difficulty typing this while pulling the log from my eye )
    60w EFI 6090 & 100w Z4 Reci 6090 G Weike Lasers, 4 X 4 CNC Router
    CLTT using Oki C822dn & Adkins Press
    Glass Sandblasting, Woodwork Shop, etc...
    V Carve Pro v8 & Photo V Carve, Lasercut 5.3, Corel Draw 2017 on Windows 7 and iMac (via Parallels), etc

  3. #3
    I laser etch brass plated Norway cowbells, the brass used to plate them is from spent ammo shells and casings. None of my Synrad lasers, which are 40, 35 and 25 watts, will fuse Cermark to them worth a darn.

    However, the 80w Reci in my Triumph puts Cermark to brass VERY well.

    In looking at your compass, I see what John is referring to as to the line definition. There's a fix for that-- I'm going to bet you didn't take a Magic Eraser to it yet

    My cowbells look much the same when I'm done. It's simply residual Cermark crust thinking it's slag. I take Magic eraser to my bells, as it's perfect for scrubbing off the crust. BIG difference!

    but BEWARE- that compass appears to be polished, and a Magic Eraser MAY add some very fine grain to it. Or not- I use these on polished stainless without scratching it. Just never tried it on polished brass. So IF you try it, choose ONE direction- sideways with the text is usually best- and scrub ONLY that direction. If possible, scrub with warm water flowing over it. If water intrusion is an issue, just make sure the Eraser is wet.

    This will also tell you if your Cermark is indeed fused well, because if it's not, the Eraser may remove it!
    ========================================
    ELEVEN - rotary cutter tool machines
    FOUR - CO2 lasers
    THREE- make that FOUR now - fiber lasers
    ONE - vinyl cutter
    CASmate, Corel, Gravostyle


  4. #4
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    North Yorkshire, UK
    Posts
    465
    Aah, now there you go again Kev, another of those handy tips for me to file away Thanks!
    60w EFI 6090 & 100w Z4 Reci 6090 G Weike Lasers, 4 X 4 CNC Router
    CLTT using Oki C822dn & Adkins Press
    Glass Sandblasting, Woodwork Shop, etc...
    V Carve Pro v8 & Photo V Carve, Lasercut 5.3, Corel Draw 2017 on Windows 7 and iMac (via Parallels), etc

  5. #5
    I had a customer come in and want some brass items marked. I explained at the time, we had no way to do it, because Cermark didn't work well on brass. We cermarked stainless for them all the time and they insisted we try it. I told them repeatedly that it might look great but it wouldn't last. It was an every day item, handled by the end customer dozens of times a day. They weren't having it, they insisted I did them. We marked 1000's of them with cermark. They looked fantastic. Very sharp, very small fonts. Then they showed up about 6 months later and said we needed to do something different on the brass because the text was wearing off over time.

    I can put a beautiful mark on brass. You can't rub it off with your fingers, but over time, if it's repeatedly used, it will wear off. If it was sitting on a shelf, I'd be glad to do it.
    Lasers : Trotec Speedy 300 75W, Trotec Speedy 300 80W, Galvo Fiber Laser 20W
    Printers : Mimaki UJF-6042 UV Flatbed Printer , HP Designjet L26500 61" Wide Format Latex Printer, Summa S140-T 48" Vinyl Plotter
    Router : ShopBot 48" x 96" CNC Router Rotary Engravers : (2) Xenetech XOT 16 x 25 Rotary Engravers

    Real name Steve but that name was taken on the forum. Used Middle name. Call me Steve or Scott, doesn't matter.

  6. #6
    My experience with brass and Cermark is similar and I refuse to do any brass or copper items.
    Mike Null

    St. Louis Laser, Inc.

    Trotec Speedy 300, 80 watt
    Gravograph IS400
    Woodworking shop CLTT and Laser Sublimation
    Dye Sublimation
    CorelDraw X5, X7

  7. #7
    Thanks for all the valuable input! I agree about the lines. I use a soft bristle tooth brush to try and clean up. I will admit that I was nervous to leave scratches and/or start to remove too much marking. Fortunately these are sit on the shelf items, so I'm fairly confident about the final results. As first stated, this was a 9 item run. As I explained to the customer, I had hoped to have their logo on there as their only other option was leaving them blank. I hope to continue to learn and improve my quality. I appreciate this community to help along the way as the only "experts" in the area are not all that interested in sharing their knowledge... hmmm, wonder why? lol

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