Recommendation? Laser Etching Machine

JackstrawIII

JackstrawIII

Joined
Jan 25, 2015
Messages
427
Hey guys,

I'm thinking about investing in a laser etching machine to do my brand logo, customer names, etc.

Looking for a recommendation on what type of machine you guys use and what sort of costs we're looking at. I don't want one of the electrolyte type etchers, but a computer-programmable laser. I've been looking around online but there are a zillion options and I'm not sure where to go from here.

Thanks all.
 
A few years ago I was looking at picking one up to for my work and quickly discovered that in order to actually etch steel to any practical depth it was rather pricy. You see cheep units that do t seam bad but thy don't actually etch steel. You paint on a liquid and the laser bakes it onto the surface. We needed .005 depth engraving which was required by the BATFE. It turned out to be cheaper to for us to just CNC mill in the serial numbers and logos even though it took much longer. I think the cost for somthing at that time (that would do the .005 depth) was in the 5 digits. We bought a used CNC mill instead for 25K$ to do the engraving.
 
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The only laser that will do what you want is a fiber laser.
A cheap one starts at about $13000.00.
A Hermes pantograph with diamond stylus will do what you want for much less. There are people who will make a template for your logo, and letter fonts are available for custom work. Ebay is your friend.
Unless you want to spend a lot of money, the Hermes machine or jobbing the work out is your best bet.
 
Bill DeShivs said:
The only laser that will do what you want is a fiber laser.
A cheap one starts at about $13000.00.
A Hermes pantograph with diamond stylus will do what you want for much less. There are people who will make a template for your logo, and letter fonts are available for custom work. Ebay is your friend.
Unless you want to spend a lot of money, the Hermes machine or jobbing the work out is your best bet.
Click to expand...
Yeah I think the one we looked at was around 20k but we needed an A axis to engrave tubes.
 
We have a fiber laser here at my work. Unless you are just marking the blade with no handle, and only on the flats, the setup time is a PITA. Unless you are doing a run of many identical knives. I can use the one here, but I used electrochemical etching if that tells you anything.
 
ours is an Epilog Fibermark 50 watt fiber laser. It will mark stainless steel, but I have found that getting a nice even black can be difficult. If you don't have it dialed in just right, it's either brown, or you get haze around the mark.
 
Bill DeShivs said:
The only laser that will do what you want is a fiber laser.
A cheap one starts at about $13000.00.
A Hermes pantograph with diamond stylus will do what you want for much less. There are people who will make a template for your logo, and letter fonts are available for custom work. Ebay is your friend.
Unless you want to spend a lot of money, the Hermes machine or jobbing the work out is your best bet.
Click to expand...

I've seen this mentioned here before. Is that a little laser thing? Little gas pumped lasers won't etch steel? Because we cut and etch steel with a gas laser, and a fiber laser. I'm just curious as I know nothing about the little ones.
 
Kuraki-
The Hermes machine is not a laser. It is a pantograph type manual engraving machine that uses a diamond stylus to engrave metals.
You look old enough to remember the machine they engraved bracelets and lighters with at the five and dime? Small Hermes engraving machine.
 
Bill DeShivs Bill DeShivs I was talking about your very first comment regarding fiber lasers.

I've been watching for a pantograph since I first read you post about using one.
 
I'm sure one of the Deckel or Gorton pantographs once common to tool and die shops would do it with the right cutter.
Mind you those take up about the space of a Bridgeport.... Very versatile though. One is on my shopping list for the next few years
 
Contact me. I'm sure I can help you with a Hermes pantograph.
 
Deckel/Gorton pantograph mills are extremely versatile machines, but they still require letters or patterns to follow, and the machines are big.
 
I also ran a low wattage fiber laser for work for a while. (30w epilog) We also were hoping to use it for BATF serial number compliance on aluminum. And like JT we also abandoned it for engraving because the thing took so many passes to get to depth it just wasn't practical compared to just using the CNC to do it.
It was sufficient for surface marking blades, but required multiple passes to get any engraving action at all. The engraved mark is also often rough and bleeds out a little. A layer of masking tape will help with that though.
Electro etching is a pain, but in my opinion gives a cleaner look, and is more cost effective for anyone but a major manufacturer.
 
Bill DeShivs said:
Deckel/Gorton pantograph mills are extremely versatile machines, but they still require letters or patterns to follow, and the machines are big.
Click to expand...
They are very tooling intensive for sure, and would require all the same patterns.

It was more another option of something nice to have anyways that'd also cover engraving. Mind you I'm sure most knife makers are in the same boat as me where adding anything beyond about a toaster oven would require a bigger shop....
 
I'm not sure how it would be. I bought the personalized plus, and the complete setup for making stencils to go with it (hindsight really not worth it, just order stencils from someone. I make maybe 1/100th of the custom stencils I thought I would) and it was about $800 for everything. But that's basically a lifetime supply of free stencils apart from replenishing the odd consumable liquid.
 
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