Using LASER Engraving to remove plastic coating over steel
Hey guys,
As the title says, I'm having some issues using my 20W Fiber LASER Engraver to engrave a logo on plastic-coated steel (the item is a piece of eyewear- a colored eyeglasses arm).
The settings I use either create a plastic bubble, or a burn zone around the material, or they do not penetrate and vaporize the plastic enough, leaving a thin 'raised plastic' zone.
Engraving with harsher settings (more power, higher frequency, changes in pulse width) are somewhat more successful at removing the plastic, but then the material under them gets a black burn mark. This problem I can alleviate by doing a second engraving using a clean-up pass, resulting in a white finish, which is ALMOST what we want.
To add insult to injury, there is an already-existing successful engraving on the piece which has no burn marks around and looks nice and white. Argh! xD
Re: Using LASER Engraving to remove plastic coating over steel
I got it to work!
However, it takes more passes than normal to clear off the plastic.
Follow that up with a nice Steel-friendly engraving for a White Finish. Looks great, but there are different settings one would have to apply based on what color coatings.
The red coating was the one giving me the most issues. Black was easy, and so was yellow, and blue was alright.
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Using LASER Engraving to remove plastic coating over steel
