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Thread: Fiber Laser Initial Impressions: It's slower than people suggest

  1. #31
    Join Date
    Mar 2014
    Location
    Iowa USA
    Posts
    4,441
    Quote Originally Posted by Ross Moshinsky View Post
    This would be an example of the darkening acid used: https://www.jpplus.com/3oz-brass-oxidizing-solution
    Thanks Ross, I found on Amazon for less than $8 shipped.
    Retired Guy- Central Iowa.HVAC/R , Cloudray Galvo Fiber , -Windows 10

  2. #32
    for you guys with fiber lasers and using acid to darken your brass,
    this is straight off the fiber, which I made a video of--
    just a touch of SS spray cleaner afterward-
    fiberbrass1.jpg fiberbrass2.jpg
    This is .040" thick good engravers brass; the mark is actually a really dark brown. At the end of the video
    the overhead lights washed it out a bit, the photos give a better rendition...

    not perfect maybe, but neither is acid by a stretch! Not sure about other types of brass,
    but I've been engraving brass plated cowbells for 4 years with the fiber, and the brass
    they use is recycled ammo brass, and they go just as dark as the leaded brass above...
    a shot of clearcoat afterward and the etch goes jet black. I used to Cermark these, not any more
    skiteambell.jpg
    Video of engraving the plate in the pics
    ========================================
    ELEVEN - rotary cutter tool machines
    FOUR - CO2 lasers
    THREE- make that FOUR now - fiber lasers
    ONE - vinyl cutter
    CASmate, Corel, Gravostyle


  3. #33
    There's no doubt that both methods have their place. The reason I like the method I did was: Most of the brass I engrave is .016 or .02. To get a dark / annealed mark puts a lot of heat in the material. It's also much slower. If I just etch it enough, I can hit it with the acid and end up with a still perfectly flat plate without the slag or issues.
    Equipment: IS400, IS6000, VLS 6.60, LS100, HP4550, Ricoh GX e3300n, Hotronix STX20
    Software: Adobe Suite & Gravostyle 5
    Business: Trophy, Awards and Engraving

  4. #34
    Oh yeah, heat is always the big X factor with fibers, it's astounding the amount of heat they generate!

    Years ago I got a job fancy-ing up the grips on about 50 Kimbers for an Air Force squadron; I cut the pockets with my IS-400, then bought a bunch of pre-cut, thin SS disks for them--
    gripdisk2.jpg
    gripdisk1.jpg
    ^^this one took a lot of testing and fiddling to get all the different shades, but they came out great!
    --problem was, all of them warped into tiny 'bowls' from the heat! I tried flattening them several different ways, to no avail...

    So I thought: if heat bent them, maybe heat will straighten them...
    EzCad has an island-fill hatch, so I created a spiral hatch and just re-engraved the backs--
    heatdisks.jpg
    Took a few practice runs, and the 2 different graphics warped at different rates, but in the end the spiral hatch flattened them back perfectly!
    --in looking back, I could've de-focused the laser so it wouldn't actually engrave the backs, just the heat would do it. The disks needed to be silicone'd in anyway, so the engraving provided something for the adhesive to stick to, so no problem!

    Not saying running the opposite side should be used as a way to straighten metal the laser bent in normal practice, but it CAN be! --One way I've found to combat warping, is to set the metal I'm about to laser on a cold, wet red shop towel, or even a wet paper towel, it does help! I haven't engraved much if any THIN brass, guess I should try some
    ========================================
    ELEVEN - rotary cutter tool machines
    FOUR - CO2 lasers
    THREE- make that FOUR now - fiber lasers
    ONE - vinyl cutter
    CASmate, Corel, Gravostyle


  5. #35
    I've been using Lightburn since it first came out for CO2 lasers, and it has evolved tremendously over the past few years. I put up the original request for Lightburn to run galvo lasers back in 2019 https://lightburn.fider.io/posts/670...r-fiber-lasers I'm lucky enough to be one of the Beta testers, so was using the galvo included version before it was publicly released. The beta version usually has a few new features which the developers have included (latest is a hot key editor), so we get to see in advance what new features are going to be released.

    One of the great things about running Lightburn is that you can have multiple windows open at the same time, I've been running three CO2 lasers and a fiber at once, sending different jobs to each machine without issue.
    Shenhui SG350 fitted with a 60w tube.
    Aeon Nova 10 100w tube.
    Aeon Mira 5030 30w RF tube.
    20w Fiber Laser.
    50w Fiber Laser.
    Located in the Isle of Man, which isn't in the UK but almost surrounded by it.

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