Full Version: stainless problem
From: Boz (CHEDDARHEAD) [#11]
17 Jan 2006
To: ALL
You also might not be getting all of your laser energy to the material being engraved. If your optics are dirty, scratched, pitted, the coating is breaking down, or you are out of alignment, you will lose energy. Whenever a customer calls with a concern about his laser needing to be recharged, I always have him check his alignment and optics before telling him to spend his money, or even worse, my money. First, clean all of the optics using very high quality cleaning solutions made for cleaning CO2 coated optics. Then check your alignment. Just make sure your laser beam is going down the center of all of your optics and not clipping any other components. If everything is all clear, then run your system for ~ 10 minutes at full power. After the machine stops, very carefully reach in and touch the backs of all of your mirrors, mirror mounts, lenses, lens mounts, and output window in the machine. If you feel any heat build up on anything, you probably have a something wrong with that optic. The hydroscopic coatings on CO2 laser optics can be going bad and look fine to the naked eye. If heat is being built up, something is wrong. Heat build up also componds the problems. As a component heats up, thermal expansion or contraction will change the pointing stability of your system and will generally cause the optic to obsorb more energy which is converted to heat. A 2" fl. lens is a heck of a lot cheaper to replace than a laser exchange.
Also, the dynamics of our laser beams have most of the energy in the middle of the beam, and less energy out towards the edges of the laser beam. IF you have a "bad spot" on an optic, which happens to change the profile of your laser beam, you will also change how the beam couples with the material. And coupling metal marking spray with a metal is pretty particular to parameters. You do not have to be off by much to be able to rub off your engraving.
From: Harvey only (HARVEY-ONLY) [#12]
17 Jan 2006
To: Boz (CHEDDARHEAD) [#11] 20 Jan 2006
One thing not mentioned.
If the coating is too thick there will not be enough heat transfer to get the job done right.
From: Barbara (RGILE) [#13]
18 Jan 2006
To: baz (RINGROAD) [#7] 18 Jan 2006
I have a 30W LaserPro and have no problem with Stainless Steel.
I use a setting of 20 speed 100 power. I also use 300 DPI
and it seems to work fine for me.
I do not know why epilog would not do that also.
Are you spraying on the Cermark? Perhaps its too thick and is not going trough it properley.
Also, found that engraving it twice does not work. It just lasers out the Cermark and looks silver again.
Hope this helped a little.
Barb
From: joepafan (GPERZEL) [#14]
21 Jan 2006
To: ALL
Hi All;
I can almost guarantee that the problem is the stainless has a protective coating on it - usually a lacquer.
George