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Laser engravers..........what's out there?

david n

david n

Diamond
Joined
Apr 13, 2007
Location
Pillager, MN
I see "toy" engravers being sold everywhere for the home hobby guys and millennial "craftsmen":rolleyes5:...........what's out there for industrial/commercial grade engravers? Or are some of the weekend warrior models up to the task? What to look for? Only looking to mark parts for customers in various materials.....part numbers, logos and such. Parts are all smaller than a shoe box...........heck, smaller than a soup can.........................TIA
 
We have been needing one for a few years now and ARE pulling the trigger as soon as we close on the new property. ( which search of seems to be taking inordinately long )

You want to avoid CO2. Toy stuff. Fiber seems the way to go. Marking can be done around 20W with Fiber, and Engraving around 40W/50W and up, depending on details of material and needs. And it costs more. We are finally getting there and I cannot wait. SO tired of dealing with sub standard idiots unable to follow directions who think spelling, font choice, dimensionality, and location are flexible and interpretive. :angry:
 
I would suggest Trotec and Universal Laser, Epilog, not so much. CO2 is fine for anodized parts and plastics, you will need Fiber for actually cutting into metal, whether it be a few thousandths for part parking or deeper for engraving and gun style marking/stipling which is all the rage on Glocks right now. Be ready to spend a lot of money for a fiber in the 30-50w range, and be cautious, most of the fiber machines are just Chinese imports with a local company behind them.

I have had Universal Laser CO2 machines since the early 90's, they do what I need to do, and I'm not all that interested in using a Fiber, but if you want speed and your parts are small enough to go on a Galvo machine, then that might be the way to go.
 
Make sure you know what material you want to mark. A lot of the quality CO2 lasers (Epilog, Universal Laser etc) are not going to be able to engrave directly on metal but reportedly do great on other materials. However there are products like Ceramark you spray on the metal that allow you to mark on it. Like Zahnrad said I hear Fiber is the way to go but $$$. I have heard some of the toy diod lasers can mark directly on metal but as the saying goes you get what you pay for. Not a laser guy and don't own one but looked into buying one a fair amount.
 
We finally picked up a fiber laser this last summer. It's an Epilog Fibermark 24. Set us back about $30k. Took a little bit to dial it in for copper & brass but it works great and is worth every penny.
 
We have an Epilog engraver to do all our mold components, part numbers, logos, and the like. Works on all materials, steel, aluminum, moldmax, plastics. We only do numbers deep enough to make them readable, I don't think your doing to do any stippling with it.
 
It really depends on what you need to do. If all you are doing is marking anodized aluminum, CO2 is fine. For engraving directly on metals, you would need a fiber or something along those lines, which are more expensive. There are definite out of the box solutions, Trotec, Control Laser and others.

I have dealt with these guys on multiple occasions where they retrofitted a new control to an old YAG laser and it worked great. They also custom build machines to customer specs depending on what you want to do, but could also set you up with something basic.

Laser Marking Services & Engraving Machines | Hai Tech Lasers

The one complaint I had about shopping lasers was that it's like some sort of secret society. Nobody wants to give you a straight answer on capabilities or price, they just want to give demos and have you sign a PO. I really liked that Hai Tech was straight up with me, gave me good info and was able to repair and retrofit a 20 year old machine they didn't build.

If you want to gamble a bit more on reliability, there are some importers like Boss or Lit that sell basically QC'ed imports. Who knows what you're actually getting as far as the machine, but from what I've read you can at least get tech support from the US, which is basically what they are selling. The bottom of the barrel would be to order an import one directly from eBay or something, but then you're basically on your own and it's a crap shoot.
 
AARONT said:
We finally picked up a fiber laser this last summer. It's an Epilog Fibermark 24. Set us back about $30k. Took a little bit to dial it in for copper & brass but it works great and is worth every penny.
Click to expand...

We got the same one (yellow?) about one year ago to mark logos, part numbers, and serial numbers on our chrome-plated steel products. We have been happy with it. Very easy to operate....connects to your computer just like a printer. Soup can-sized parts should fit just fine. I can’t compare to anything else, though, so maybe I don’t know what I’m missing.
 
Nerdlinger said:
We got the same one (yellow?) about one year ago to mark logos, part numbers, and serial numbers on our chrome-plated steel products. We have been happy with it. Very easy to operate....connects to your computer just like a printer. Soup can-sized parts should fit just fine. I can’t compare to anything else, though, so maybe I don’t know what I’m missing.
Click to expand...

Yes, it's yellow. The Coral Draw software is really easy to use. I actually am setting it up right now to run 1000 1"Ø parts from C464. I will do them in batches of 200, which should take about 20min to etch 10 numbers on each part. No ceramark, so it will leave more of a white etch.
 
I picked up a FM20 Fiber from Boss. IIRC it was in the $17-20K range.
I opted for both 110x110mm and the 200 x 200mm lens, and of course the rotary 4th.

The laser appears to be the same thing other guys are selling for less (IIRC a spammer had a laser topic within the last month or so, in the CNC subforum) or more, depending.

The laser WILL etch aluminum to a depth a 1mm, but it will take an hour or more, to get that depth.

For most part / logo/ PO#, etc: you can get a steel or aluminum part etched in a matter of seconds.
It is super simple to program, and setup.
Most jobs take less than 10 minutes to program and etch the 1st part.
I have been happy with it.

FM-20 Laser Marker by Boss Laser

Doug.
 
I work with a bunch of different laser engraver/etchers for medical marking. Some of them are old enough we have to have parts custom built when they break...Which isn't cheap. On that note, due to older lasers needing to be replaced, we recently bought a Tykma/Electrox Zetalase XL (fiber, 50W) and so far it is the best laser I've worked with. They have a lot of lasers available, and the service technicians are super helpful and get back to you quickly. Check out permanentmarking.com for more info.
 
I think you need to define "various materials".
Co2 and fiber have different wavelengths. Makes a difference on clear plastics.
If all you are doing is metals. Bare or anodized I can send you pics of what a fiber can do on both of those.
 
I bought one of the 20w Chinese fiber lasers from ebay about a month ago. I bought it from a California seller so I didn't have to deal with any of the FDA import requirements.

No surprises in setup or use and so far it works and I haven't had any issues - probably have less than 2 hours of actual marking time on it so far.

I paid $3325...time will tell if that turns out to be a good deal.
 
jm7905 said:
I bought one of the 20w Chinese fiber lasers from ebay about a month ago. I bought it from a California seller so I didn't have to deal with any of the FDA import requirements.

No surprises in setup or use and so far it works and I haven't had any issues - probably have less than 2 hours of actual marking time on it so far.

I paid $3325...time will tell if that turns out to be a good deal.
Click to expand...

What materials have you marked?

Would is mark stainless steel?
 
A CO-2 laser likes organic materials to mark. It reflects too much to mark metals. An outfit called Full Spectrum Laser ( Full Spectrum Laser | Lasers for Cutting and Engraving) has an interesting method for the Chinese lasers it sells; they do the importing and check that they work. They also remove the controller card that came in the cheap ones and replace it with their own. They also supply their own USA editing software (the stuff that comes with Chinese machines is quite terrible).
 
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