Fiber laser engraver recommendations

[Steve Utick]

Been lurking here for a bit. I've seen it come up numerous times where people have said you can get a fairly decent Chinese fiber laser for around $5000 delivered to the U.S. However, I've never seen anything about a vendor name related to that. Any recommendations of a vendor to speak to if I'd like to add a fiber laser to my set of tools?

Thanks!

[John Lifer]

Base màchine is about that. Plus customs and fees. And add if you want a rotary and other lens. Ray fine. Give Blanca a shout and she will give you as good a quote as you can get. Satisfied customer. I've a CO2 laser from them and a 20watt fiber hopefully shipping this next week.
Web: www.rayfinetech.com
Email​​​:​ yanblanca@yahoo.com

[Rodne Gold]

I got mine from Longtai liaocheng lasers
https://longtailaser.en.alibaba.com/
Speak to Yarde Feng there
Skype yardefeng
Excellent machine ..20w .. if you can spring a little more , try for a 30w

[David Somers]

I would also recommend Ray Fine and Blanca. I have a CO2 laser and a CNC from them and am very pleased with both the machines and with Blanca as a sales person and also a quasi tech person. I do not have one of their fiber's though.

Let us know who you finally choose and how you like the machine once you have one.

BTW. I assume you are aware of the various kinds of fibers available and their strengths and weaknesses depending on the work you want them to do and materials you want them to work on?

Dave

[Steve Utick]

I would also recommend Ray Fine and Blanca. I have a CO2 laser and a CNC from them and am very pleased with both the machines and with Blanca as a sales person and also a quasi tech person. I do not have one of their fiber's though.

Let us know who you finally choose and how you like the machine once you have one.

BTW. I assume you are aware of the various kinds of fibers available and their strengths and weaknesses depending on the work you want them to do and materials you want them to work on?

Dave

We've had numerous customers contact us about Stainless stuff, plus have some of our own projects with Stainless that are obviously easier on a fiber laser than messing with cermark. The main thing is to have more metal capabilities than we have now.

I've been reading up some on the Fibers, but obviously don't know everything. Would you be able to expand on the different models, capabilities, etc?

Thanks.

[David Somers]

Steve,

Without direct Fiber experience on my part I won't attempt to answer that. But there are lots of folks here with fibers of various sorts who should be able to help.

Mainly I wanted to be sure you realized there were various flavors of fibers in case you hadn't gotten that far yet.

[Kev Williams]

We've had numerous customers contact us about Stainless stuff, plus have some of our own projects with Stainless that are obviously easier on a fiber laser than messing with cermark.
Thanks.

Forgive me for being blunt, but in a word: NOPE. If you're expecting a fiber to replace Cermark, you will be more than a little disappointed. What it CAN replace, to some extent, is rotary tool engraving. And if you want to do "bright" engraving on metals, it's the bomb! However, I've had my fiber for 8 months and it hasn't replaced one bit of Cermark engraving. And as expensive at it may seem, after doing some quick math, I find that around 80 cents worth of Cermark generates $100 in sales.

Rowmark's not even close to that cheap!

[Mike Null]

+1 on the ROI on Cermark. It's the most profitable material I use.

When I was in the process of buying my Trotec I made a matrix listing brands features, etc., etc. I recommend you do the same. Besides providing a logical selection method it serves as a good self training tool. The file below will give you a start if you're interested in this project

.Fiber matrix.cdr

[Julian Ashcroft]

I got my fiber laser from a company called 'Sign-In-China' it's a 20watt model and was delivered in about 10 days of placing the order, it worked straight out of the box. I have been using it mostly to mark cutlery.

[Steve Utick]

Thanks for the suggestions and feedback.

[mike wallis]

Forgive me for being blunt, but in a word: NOPE. If you're expecting a fiber to replace Cermark, you will be more than a little disappointed. What it CAN replace, to some extent, is rotary tool engraving. And if you want to do "bright" engraving on metals, it's the bomb! However, I've had my fiber for 8 months and it hasn't replaced one bit of Cermark engraving. And as expensive at it may seem, after doing some quick math, I find that around 80 cents worth of Cermark generates $100 in sales.

Rowmark's not even close to that cheap!

Hello Kev,
We are considering going to a fiber to phase out the Thermark. Two main reasons is it's time consuming, messy and toxic when sprayed. We use Thermark on stainless steel and brass (1/16" thick) for sizes from 1x3" to 18x24". What are you main disappointments using the fiber compared to the Cermark?

[Jacob John]

Hello Kev,
We are considering going to a fiber to phase out the Thermark. Two main reasons is it's time consuming, messy and toxic when sprayed. We use Thermark on stainless steel and brass (1/16" thick) for sizes from 1x3" to 18x24". What are you main disappointments using the fiber compared to the Cermark?

BUMP to see if Kev can respond. That's a fairly pointed statement that he made. The companies that market fiber lasers seem to subtly suggest that their fibers can all but replace the need for Cermark.

[Tim Bateson]

...The companies that market fiber lasers seem to subtly suggest that their fibers can all but replace the need for Cermark.

If you think CerMark is slow, wait until you try it without CerMark on a Fiber. Beautiful mark, but very, very slow.

[Scott Shepherd]

Hello Kev,
We are considering going to a fiber to phase out the Thermark. Two main reasons is it's time consuming, messy and toxic when sprayed. We use Thermark on stainless steel and brass (1/16" thick) for sizes from 1x3" to 18x24". What are you main disappointments using the fiber compared to the Cermark?

If you have any plans to do anything productive with a fiber on 18" x 24" pieces, you're mistaken. A fiber won't begin to compete with Cermark on pieces that size. We have a fiber and I'd agree with Kev's assessment completely. I had a customer bring in some 4" x 6" stainless plates for a piece of equipment that produce. The part was done on a fiber. We replicated what they had. The pieces took 45 minutes each and I wasn't happy with them, but they matched what they had (the most important thing for them). Cermark would have done that same job with a better result in 1/3 the time if not less.

Brass? Don't get me started. Some brass marks, some doesn't with the fiber. You'll figure out which ones won't mark when you take a job on for a customer and they supply you with boxes of parts you can't mark.

The fiber is by no means the holy grail of metal marking that some people want you to believe it is. The larger the item, the worse it is for the fiber. You don't get to mark parts with a fiber with 1 pass for the most part. You'll have to take lots of passes and the larger the graphic gets, the quicker that time clock goes up exponentially.

[Kev Williams]

Hello Kev,
We are considering going to a fiber to phase out the Thermark. Two main reasons is it's time consuming, messy and toxic when sprayed. We use Thermark on stainless steel and brass (1/16" thick) for sizes from 1x3" to 18x24". What are you main disappointments using the fiber compared to the Cermark?

Sorry I missed this the first time...

For one thing, non-ferrous metals like brass, copper and bronze don't respond well to a fiber, if at all. And because they don't respond well, they, and copper in particular, become mirrors able to reflect the beam back up into the lens. Personally, I'm of the opinion that while this is true, what would normally reach the lens would be so out of focus as to be insignificant. I accidentally put my arm right thru the beam one day to open my exhaust's blast gate while engraving black anodized at 100% power. The only reason I knew I'd done it is the laser's 'music' stopped playing -- didn't feel a thing. Not a smart move, but it did tell me that an out of focus fiber beam had no effect on my skin. Counter point-- twice with the fiber and many times with the LS900 I've been hit with beam reflections (engraving curved items) and in all cases, I was a good 2' from the source of the reflection, and in all cases I felt a very pronounced amount of heat. SO-- it's definitely possible an errant reflect could damage the machines- and your eyes if you're not wearing glasses.

More on not responding well, I have a piece of solid copper, and some copper plated cups I've tested. Solid copper just won't mark. Occasionally I hit a speed/power/freq setting that worked somewhat, but it wouldn't repeat. Same with the cup, once in awhile I'd get a dark brown burn, but right next to it a faint mark. The burn was simply that the laser found its way thru the coating and was burning the stainless base metal.

As for engraving stainless--
On mirrored or otherwise shiny SS, setting the laser at lower power and a higher freq results in a nice bright mark that is very high contrast to the shiny surface. How bright depends on settings, and also hatch spacing. Too much power and the result starts to go yellow. Too tight a hatch and the result is 'flat', but in certain cases this is a good thing. Black Cermark on shiny SS is counter productive because whatever is reflected from the background surroundings washes out the marking. If there's nothing but blue sky or white walls reflecting (rare in real life ) then okay. Think knife blades- every customer (but one) I used to black Cermark on polished blades LOVES the bright engraving. Polished SS, fiber wins.

For mill finish or #4 or other non-shiny finish, you simply can't beat Cermark. It's main pain is the extra steps involved, but the results can't be beat. I do a LOT of stainless, I just bought my 3rd 500 gram bottle this YEAR. Black via Cermark simply works, and is very popular with my customers. Give up spraying it and start brushing it, it's easier, no overspray to worry about, in my testing I use half as much brushing as spraying (I'm taking 1 to 4+ square foot operator panels)...

Even for small plates, a fiber isn't the best option for black. For deep engraving to keep some engineers happy, the fiber works okay. It's actually slower than tool engraving, but that extra time is more than evened out by NOT having to sharpen the laser beam .. Tool sharpening time can add up to the ridiculous... Getting SS a decent black via slow annealing requires reasonably thick material. Just before typing this I just did a pair of .020" thick SS disks, a repeat of some I did a month ago, except back then the disks were .031" thick- the place was out of those, so I had to settle for the thinner. The .031 didn't go anywhere near black, but WAS acceptably dark, but the .020 (both 304ss) didn't go anywhere near DARK let alone black. I have no scientific evidence, but what I see from my jobs is thicker goes blacker. Must be a heat thing, I assume the thinner cools off before the carbon at the surface can oxidize. And basic SS small plates are typically 20ga, which is roughly .031 thick. And even you get it black, the time it takes is excruciating!

I could keep going but that's the jist of it, based on my experiences. Been using Cermark for 15 years, and for all it's cost and PIA factor, until something else that actually works comes along, I'll keep using it