I do not have an extra 4 grand laying around right now lol
I absolutely hear that and I wouldn’t recommend this particular laser for marking in any case. I purchased that much wattage because I wanted to be able to engrave coins in a timely manner.
I was leaning more towards the Xtool F2 dual laser which has a 5w IR laser that would be able to make the same type of mark, though it would take longer at 1/20th the power. I don’t believe it would take 20x longer as laser engrave times are not linear in my experience.
My step-son has a F2, the next time I see him I’ll send him home with some aluminum to see how long it would take to mark (I’m genuinely curious). At around $1500 it would be more in the range of the JTech laser, though still more pricey w/a smaller foot print.
I still think the JTech w/marking spray may be viable as well, but I lack the ability to give you good information on that. Hopefully another forum member with JTech experience has the info and will speak up.
Also the JTech would open more capability, I really like the video 1F did where they did a carve then used the laser to do highlighting/shadows. I think another user was using theirs to carve areas folks had hiked, then using the laser to image the trail system. All very cool stuff.
In the short term see if there is a maker near you with a fiber laser. They might do what you need for a reasonable price or offer to reciprocate services making them jigs for their laser.
Other than miss-framing it so it isn’t centered the mark is very good. This took about 3 minutes to image at 400mm/s, 80% Power, 200LPI. The text could be a little cleaner if I pushed it to 300lpi, but the higher the lines per inch, the slower the engrave. I could have also lowered it to 100lpi and imaged much faster and possibly still had acceptable results.
The end text is a bit ragged, but that laser table isn’t as level relative to the gantry as it s/b which messes with the focus a bit. I also may not have applied the marking spray as evenly as I should.
As tests go though, I see no reason why you can’t work with marking spray and a JTech laser to accomplish your goal.
The 34watt JTech would perform very similarly to my test as it’s the same frequency of laser as the diode laser I used.
This is the marking spray I use, it’s reasonably priced as marking spray goes, especially if you buy the two pack. I imagine a can would go quite a ways.
you are a gem. thanks for all the information. I will look into it for sure but right now I am still working on getting my new gen 2 table up and running. I hope to have it all put together by the end of this week. including the 4th axis lifter.
