What are the Differences of Laser Engraving, Laser Marking and Laser Etching?

For most amateurs, laser engraving, laser marking and laser etching may work in the same way and produce similar products. And indeed these three technologies can be used interchangeably in some circumstances, but they do have their own characteristics and usages respectively. This article will give an explanation on the main differences among them.

1. Laser Engraving

Based on computer numerical control (CNC) technology, laser engraving works in a way that the laser beam removes the surface of the materials selectively as per the patterns output from the computer. And then an image or pattern will be appeared on the surface of materials. It differs from laser marking and etching in 5 ways:

• According to the material surface and how much you remove, laser engraving can be divided into etching, laser ablation and deep laser engraving.
• This can engrave a wide range of materials, such as plastic, leather, metal, glass, etc.
• Best for personalization and customization.
• This is the fastest laser marking way.
• Do not touch the surface of materials during engraving process.

2. Laser Marking

As one of the most widely used application fields of laser technology, laser marking is mainly used in advertisement industries, construction industries and signage production industries. It’s a process where laser beam works on the surface of a material, changing its appearance subtly and permanently. From millimeter level to micron size, laser marking can process various characters, symbols and patterns, which plays a meaningful role in anti-fake systems. It differs from laser engraving and laser etching in the following 4 ways:

• It consists of annealing, carbon migration, foaming and coloration.
• It’s less common than laser engraving or etching.
• It’s usually used in medical device industry.
• It’s ideal for marking logos, bar codes, UID codes and other identification objects.

3. Laser Etching

As a subset of laser engraving, laser etching is a process that the heat produced by laser beam melts the surface of materials. This heat has a pretty high temperature which causes the materials to raise a mark, with the depth being no more than 0.001”. It differs from laser engraving and marking in the following ways:

• It changes the reflectivity of the materials and enhances contrasts between marked areas and unmarked areas.
• Less productive than laser engraving and marking and not suitable for mass production.

Even though these three types of laser technology all have their advantages and disadvantages in processing materials, they are indispensable and contributory to modern industries and society.

For more details for laser engraving, laser marking and laser etching, please feel free to contact us and we will provide you professional laser advice via our experts team and the industry partners.

Article Source: http://www.morntech.com/blog/differences-of-laser-engraving-laser-marking-and-laser-etching/

How to Achieve Business Success with a Laser Engraver

Laser engraving objects and crafts have pervaded in people’s daily lives. This article aims not to give an elaborate description on this, but to steer you how to make profits from laser engravers. If being utilized in an innovative way, the laser engraver will be a treasure trove for you. Otherwise, it is and will always be a cold machine without feelings, running day after day.

The laser engravers sold by many companies do have various models and applications to cater to different production needs. Some considerate suppliers may also talk to you with a river of words about how well their engravers work or how to operate them rightly. But they seem to forget one thing that how to use the laser engraver is completely depends on “you”! It’s really a pity that there are quite a few purchasers who are convinced by the blueprint drawn by laser engraver salesmen. Apart from selling machines, these salesmen are also good at promising you “pie in the sky”. What a disservice it is!

Here we would like to share some laser engraving experience with you based on our years of industrial accumulation and practice, no matter which supplier you buy your laser engraver from. This sharing, of course, is always built on a good investigation about your purchasing background, purpose, work environment and potential market in advance.

Hard rules do exist in laser engraving industry. These rules can also be golden rules whether you are a novice in laser engraving industry or a senior who plans to upgrade your laser engraver. Let’s now have a look at these 3 rules below.

1.Service

Without any doubt, service is always the NO. 1 rule regarding buying a laser engraver. You may ask why not the brands or quality of the laser engraver rank first? But here is a question for you - can well-known brands or high quality machines guarantee the service you want before and after buying? Absolutely not. The responsible persistent service and post-sale technological support are the step-stones toward your laser engraving success, regardless a cheaper machine or an expensive one you bought.

2.Size

Here 2 types of size matter. The first one is the watt range of a laser engraver. Generally speaking, if you are a novice starting your engraving business without much experience, then a 25-30 watts at least laser engraver may be suitable for you. As an additional device, an air assist is also recommended to help you get deeper and cleaner engraving and cutting results. You can compare the engraving results with and without the air assist. And as for senior people, you could choose proper watt range for your laser engraver.

Another size is the size of engraving bed, which is decided by your engraving requirement and budget. Usually the bigger, the better and more expensive. If you just intend to engrave small-size materials, a 12” X 24” engraving bed will be a wise choice to you. And if you also want to engrave some bigger size materials occasionally, a flexible laser engraving machine which can offer a front or rear door capability for larger materials can meet your need.

3.Market

Those fails to achieve success from laser engraving industry are likely to overlook the laser engraving market. Thus an overall and profound research on the market is an essential step on your way of developing laser engraving business. If you have a clear idea about the market, then don’t stay with the status quo. You may work well in the current engraving market and feel satisfied about your profit made from your laser engraving business. But you have to know this is not a business success which comes from continuous innovation and practices, rather than just following the rules of market and being controlled by market demands. To help you improve your laser engraving business, 2 simple standards are sketched as followings.

1) Quality

Both material quality and workmanship quality are of great importance to engraving business. Don’t take your customer’s expectations as your only engraving quality standard. You can try spending extra ten or more minutes to engrave a project and check out what result it will be. And you might surprise your customers in these ten more minutes!

2) On-Time Delivery

In any business including engraving, delivery delay equals to the termination of future cooperation. Don’t run your engraving business by a fluke, even though your engraving results are perfect enough. A well-organized engraving schedule will bring good to you in the long term.

To conclude, we strongly encourage you to develop your laser engraving business via providing decent service, striving for innovation, diving into market and guarantee engraving quality. Stick to these guidelines and you will finally succeed in the laser engraving field.

Article Source: http://www.morntech.com/blog/achieve-business-success-with-a-laser-engraver/

5 CNC Cutting Technologies of Precision Machining

Modern manufacturing factories have invested an increasing amount of money in their favorite computer numerical control (CNC) technology. CNC technology not only updated the modes of production of traditional industries into a very fast and high quality, but also relieved a mass of labors from repetitive and heavy work.

Manufacturers who have a special request for precision are sparing their effort to invest both lots of money and energy to develop CNC technology. As a main application branch of CNC, laser cutting technologies skyrocket in these decades. So this article intends to talk about 5 cutting technologies respectively.

1. Laser Cutting

Being widely used in advertising industries and architectural models for mini acrylic character cutting, light box, logo production, plastic and wood models and more, laser cutting is suitable for cutting paper, cooper, wood, aluminum and so forth. The most commonly used laser cutting machine is called carbon dioxide (CO2) laser.

2. Oxy-Fuel Cutting

Oxy-fuel cutting works best when cutting thinner metals. Compared with laser cutting and plasma cutting, this method is more affordable for you if your production involves cutting thin or medium metals or other materials.

3. Electric Discharge Machining (EDM)

EDM technique is to some extent the most powerful cutting method among these 5 cutting technologies, because it can cut almost any material that is even harder than steel. EDM is a one kind cutting technique, for the cutting objects and the electrode never touch each other.

4. Plasma Cutting

Plasma cutting utilizes the heat produced by high-temperature plasma arc to melt and vaporize the cutting edges of the materials. This method cuts pretty fast especially regarding to thinner metal sheets or plates.

5. Water Jet Machining

Water jet machining can be controlled by computer automatically and it can cut any material except for tempered glass. This technique requires to use a mount of high-pressure and fast-speed water to cut two-dimensional materials. One of the most favorable advantages of this is that the chippings produced from cutting materials can be flowed away by water, increasing work efficiency markedly.

More advancements in cutting technologies will be created continuously with more effort spent in the field. These techniques will contribute more to people’s production and lives.

Article Source: http://www.morntech.com/blog/cnc-cutting-technologies/

6 Tips for Laser Engraving Wood

Wood in nature has pretty distinct fate. Some poor wood is simply used as fuels, disappearing quickly without any trace. And some are transformed to various furniture or tools, offering convenience to people’s lives. Yet there is some other wood that can be favored and treasured by people. This kind of wood is never pure wood but is engraved by laser machine as art works or crafts.

Laser engraving technology digs out the potential value in wood. A rough and even messy wood is not worth a cent before it was engraved. However, the laser engraving technology is not that easy as we speak it. Why? This article here intends to give you some explanations via 6 tips about how to laser engrave wood.

1. Low-tack masking tape

Before engraving wood, cover the surface of the wood with low-tack masking tape. In this case, the surface of the wood won’t be dotted with brown or gray stains caused by smoke. Once the job is finished, take out the tape and you will find it’s cleaner than usual. This method can be time consuming if you are processing some very detailed projects. Then a paint scraper can be utilized to speed things up.

2. Denatured alcohol

After engraving work, prepare a bottle of denatured alcohol and a white piece of cloth to clean burn marks. Here 2 things should be heeded - you must spray the alcohol evenly to protect engraving results and you should use an uncolored piece of cloth (like white one) to wipe the burn marks without being stained by the dye.

3. Burn at 1200 DPI

A higher engraving resolution can be achieved by increasing more dots per inch (DPI). More DPI usually means more times the laser will fire. Therefore the wood can be burned darker and accordingly twice time may be taken to engrave if adopting this method. So you should make a balance between engraving resolution and time spending.

4. Back out your focus .2"

Do not set the focus of your laser automatically and set it as manually instead. You can use a digital caliper and drop your laser bed .2", which can produce less mess and smoke. In this way, not only the engraved wood surface is more cleaner than ever before, but also you will spend less time cleaning the wood surface. This method is particularly recommended when engraving pretty detailed projects.

5. Use real hardwood for large engraving

Our past engraving experiences told us that plywood does not work well as we had imagined. Then we chose hard wood for large engraving for 3 reasons. Firstly, the grain on the wood surface runs in a consistent direction, beautiful and brilliant. The second is that hardwood is heavier than plywood and a higher engraving quality can be ensured. And the last one is that the hardwood surface can be totally controlled.

6. Do some experiments on wood engraving

Although we didn’t process plywood well compared to hardwood, we do think that you are likely to engrave plywood perfectly with skilled craftsmanship and advanced engravers. It’s recommended to do more engraving experiments on different kinds of wood, from which you may figure out better laser solutions.

Laser engraving wood is a common technology in laser engraving industry, but further exploring the huge value in wood is the permanent mission of laser engraving technologies and machines. Thus we still have a long way to go to enhance laser technologies and craftsmanship.

Article Source: http://www.morntech.com/blog/laser-engraving-wood/

6 Proposals for Starting a Laser Engraving Business

If you are standing at a crossroads about start up your own business and fortunately you also have some knowledge on laser industry, then you can consider to invest a laser engraving business. Seriously speaking, you must prefer a business field that does not require so huge investment that beyond your financial capacity, yet it can be profitable in the near future. Laser engraving business can be your best choice from this perspective.

This article intends to give 6 proposals to guide you on your laser engraving business starting way.

1. Just 4 specific examples to inspire your business idea:

• Signage engraving: customize signs in plastic, wood or other materials
• Photo engraving: engrave impressive memories on wood or marble
• Models engraving: from architectural model to toys
• Festival and wedding gifts engraving: greeting cards, photo albums and ornaments

2. Front-end investment

A set of fundamental laser engraving equipment will only cost you as little as no more than $7,000, with which you can buy an affordable laser engraving machine and some raw materials you want engrave. Connecting this engraver to your computer and installing some graphic software package according to your preference. Then the laser engraver will work as a printer that can “print” the patterns you have set in the connected computer.

3. Profit margins

Profit will be soaring if you try to provide customizing engraving objects. On the one hand, you can import a cheap laser engraving machine from China to reduce cost. And on the other hand to offer personalized engraving objects to cater to different needs. Lower cost and higher engraving quality will produce big profit margins for your laser engraving business.

4.Training

As just mentioned above, the laser engraving machine works like a printer, so it’s easy to operate. The only thing you need to be trained is to master the application of graphic software package. If you have already know how to use them, then you have been very close to success.

5. Engraving materials

Laser engraving machines are so versatile that a greatly wide range of materials can be engraved, including paper, wood, fabric, rubber, plastic, stones, metals and much more. What is only limited is your imagination!

6. Find more details

When encountering breakdown of laser engraving machine, refer to manufacturer’s brochures or user manuals. Or you can directly contact us online about any of your questions and confusions regarding laser technologies and machinery.

Article Source: http://www.morntech.com/blog/starting-a-laser-engraving-business/

6 Guidelines for Laser Engraver Buying

How to evaluate whether a laser engraving machine can work well or not? Or whether a laser engraving machine is worth being invested as a money-making aided tool? For these questions, you may find answers in the following 6 guidelines.

I. Specify your work nature

Please do not think that a single laser engraving machine is able to finish all jobs assigned. The purpose of classifying laser engraving machine into different models is to deal with different kinds of processing plans. For example, if you buy a top-level laser engraving machine to engrave double color plates or buy a large-scale laser engraver to engrave seals, then not only it will be a great waste of money and energy, but will also result in unsatisfying results. Therefore, you must talk to your suppliers sufficiently about your job content, including the texture, dimensions, thickness and weight of processing materials, engraving results and more.

II. Choose the right model

After you have a clear positioning on your work nature, it’s time to choose the right laser engraver model. According to your business, like advertisement, furnishing, building materials, mining and so on, you should pay heed to the wattage, working area, accessories and technical support of the machine. In a word, precision and efficiency are the main aspects which constitute the ultimate goal of all considerations.

III.  Try to engrave something before place an order

In order to personally see the engraving results and guarantee your investment return, it’s advised to try to engrave some materials you will process in future jobs. It can be conducted by the salesman or yourself, from which you can calculate the engraving efficiency, observe the results and have a good understanding on the engraver’s performance. Then, good or not, both will reflect in your mind.

Ⅳ. Contract signing

The first thing after purchasing plan is done is to sign sales contract with supplier. You should carefully confirm the lase engraver model, configuration, price, time and way of delivery, warranty terms, payment type, etc. Once the contract is signed, you will pay some deposit as per the contract.

Ⅴ. Delivery

When the engraver you bought is delivered to you, technicians should verify whether there are damages on the machine and check accessories shipped with the machine. After examination, you should install the engraver in the right place and test its work performance according to the user manual. If all is right, you will pay the rest money to supplier.

Ⅵ. Processing problems

a.To ensure the engraving precision, please heed the rationality of processing technology in addition to the engraver itself.

b.As the quality and precision of laser head also have a great impact on processing precision, to choose proper laser head is key to your jobs.

c.The operator of laser engraver is the most subjective element in the whole processing work so that his/her working proficiency and responsibility play an important role in processing precision.

d.The wear and tear of machine is unavoidable with time going by, which can also reduce the precision of engraving results.

Article Resource: http://www.morntech.com/blog/laser-engraver-buying/

5 Key Points: How Much Money You Should Spent for a Laser Cutting Machine

When you are searching around for a satisfying laser cutting machine, you can find there are a wide range of prices, models, and suppliers waiting for your visit. Here several significant considerations are outlined for you when you are looking for a laser cutting machine.

1.Depending on the price

The prices of laser cutting machines may vary largely relying on where you purchase from. For instance, you can import one from China spending as less money as $3500, or you can also take as much money as more than $20,000 to buy a more advanced laser cutting machine with a higher quality.

2.Depending on your purpose

At present, if you just intend to buy a home use laser cutting machine, spending over your budget can be neglected then. On the other side, if you buy a laser cutter for professional use, you should really need to calm down and calculate what you will obtain from a more expensive laser cutting machine. In the long run, a good work performance and efficiency is the most priority comparing to the money you invested in the laser cutting machine.

3.Depending on the cutting materials

Never think that purchasing at a considerably cheap price a laser cutting machine is a great deal as it’s money-saving. You should go and see further. What if the laser cutting machine you bought works terribly or consumes much power and energies? This absolutely will cost you more later. And do not let the materials you cut blind your eyes, either. Providing that you just want a laser cutting machine for the most common materials like paper, a good-efficient one is still worth being invested.

4.Depending on the techniques

What is the reason? The main difference between a higher powered laser cutter and a lower powered cutter generally lies in the laser tubes. The techniques and mechanics in them are to some extent the same. Yet, if you are thinking about DIY or trying to find a laser cutting machine from eBay, the bigger ones are still worthwhile to be looked at.

5.Depending on the Brands

Investing more money is inclined to purchase from those well-known brands in the laser machine field. They charge more money but provide better engineered and supported laser systems as a whole, which, in a word, are more reliable, easier to operate and process with higher resolution, as well as favorable technical service. Therefore, you should make a farseeing choice based on long-term return and current budget.

In conclusion, when buying a laser cutting machine for professional use, any element that could be thought of should be taken into meticulous consideration. Although it’s not completely a question of money out of your pocket, you had better combine your need with budget together to pay for a laser cutter.

Article Resource: http://www.morntech.com/blog/how-much-money-you-should-spent-for-a-laser-cutting-machine/