Laser engraving zink

[Trey Tull]

I am bidding on a job that will require some fine laser work, with cermark, on small parts made from a zink alloy. They need 5k parts per month and I can load about 1200, at a time, into my 60w 28x32 usl machine.

I am concerned about the fumes that it will give off. The laser is located in my office, at my house but it is venting outside via a 660cfm dust collector. Are there any other precautions that I should take when layering that much zink?

Thank you!
Trey

[Kev Williams]

There won't be any zinc fumes, the zinc itself won't be affected by the laser, only the Cermark.

[Mike Null]

Will the Cermark work. I'd be surprised.

[John Lifer]

I would doubt that Cermak would first mark on zinc , and second would stay on at all. Zinc has relatively low melting point, only about 800f almost all marking of zone and alloys are cast marks. Fiber mark.

[Kev Williams]

don't know how 'zinky' these nuts are, but Cermark worked fine on 'em.
I would assume Trey's zinc alloy parts would be basically the same, 'alloy' being the key word..
zinc.jpg

[John Lifer]

Yep, Kev, zinc plated steel. We're all guessing, full zinc part may or may be cermarkable. I hope so!

[Bert Kemp]

Well I hope the OP gets some test parts and then comes back and lets us know the results.

[Trey Tull]

The test pieces came in and they are zink with a copper nickel coating on them. LMM6000 worked but was splotchy and my 2.0 lens didn't offer fine enough detail. The customer is shipping me some more test pieces and I going to try LMM14 and a 1.5 lens. I will report back after I test.

[Wojciech Szul]

With such big turnover of products better to be sure and hire health and safety advisor to check if is a no chance for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_fume_fever ( zinc shakes )