Laserable Material:

Anodized aluminium



Acrylic

Next to wood, acrylic is the most popular material to use with laser systems. It engraves and cuts very easily, it comes in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, and it can be relatively inexpensive. Acrylic comes in two forms, Cast and Extruded.

Cast Acrylic is used for almost all engraving purposes because the frost produced when lasered provides a nice white contrast against the clear material.

Extruded Acrylic remains clear when engraved and does not produce an adequate contrast. Extruded acrylic on the other hand is ideal if you are only going to vector cut. Extruded is less expensive than cast and also has a lower melting point that produces an almost flame finished edge when cut.

Reference materials : Carbide. Composites. Foam. Laminated plastic. Melamine. Mylar. Painted materials. Plastic. Polyester. Polyester film. Rubber. Silicon. Styrene. Veneer. Vinyl

Glass

The composition and quality of glass varies widely, and you cannot always predict the effect that you will achieve. It is always best to experiment with an unfamiliar glass source.

Generally speaking, flat glass tends to have a very consistent hardness throughout, and the engraved areas do not tend to have lighter and darker areas.

Bottles on the other hand, tend to have soft and hard spots that will cause the engraved area to appear lightly frosted in one area and heavily frosted in another. Engraving at medium and high power will somewhat compensate for this, as will two or more engraving passes. While the laser beam itself is very hot, the heat does not build up easily and should not prevent you from engraving onto full bottles of wine, champagne or other filled glass bottles. Laser engraving filled bottles is a very popular method of creating custom presentations for special occasions. The laser will not damage the liquid inside the bottle, and as long as you are not completely engraving away large sections of the bottle, you have very little chance of breaking the bottle.

Reference materials : Ceramics. Fiberglass. Marble. Stone

Metals

Anodized Aluminum comes in a variety of colors and can usually be engraved with a CO2 laser. Black anodized aluminum is great to work with because it turns white when lasered. Black anodized provides the best contrast of all the colors of anodized aluminum. Some colors of anodize - red for instance - will not turn completely white when laser engraved. Red anodize will produce a light pink color. Some improvements can be seen by performing a second pass but usually a slight shadow of color will remain. Engrave anodized aluminum at high speeds and low powers for crisp, clean images. Too much power applied to the anodized material will distort the engraving and it tends to over-burn the image.

Painted Brass: while uncoated brass cannot be laser engraved, you can still achieve an excellent product by utilzing brass that has some sort of coating, typically paint. The laser removes the coating and exposes the brass substrate. By far, the most popular laser brass is brass-coated steel. First, a steel substrate is coated with a thin layer of brass. Next, the brass is polished to a reflective finish and a coat of lacquer is applied to the brass. Finally, a paint coating is applied on top of the lacquer for the finished product.

When laser engraving brass-coated steel, you are removing only the paint and exposing the polished brass coating that is protected by the lacquer. The lacquer prevents the brass from oxiding and the bright reflective surface will stay bright for years. If you are unsure if the piece that you have is brass or brass-coated steel, you can test the material with a magnet. A magnet will stick readily to brass-coated steel, but since solid brass is not magnetic, a magnet will fall away from solid brass.

Reference materials: Anodized Aluminum. Anodized metal. Crystal coated metal. Painted metals

Tiles

Tile is an awesome material to work with. Your best choices for the best results are Black Veinless Marble (BVM) and Indian Premium Black Granite (IPBG). The reasoning behind the "black" choices of material are due to the fact that other colors just don't provide enough contrast to stand out and command attention. Be aware that when lasered properly you can easily command upwards of $150 per 12" square tile, $85 for 6" square tile and $50 for 4" square tiles. Of course this pricing scheme is subject to your pricing standards and that it is better to start somewhat high to determine what your market will bear.

Don't get into the pricing war or giving away the goods simply to make the sale. Once the product uniqueness catches on it is extremely difficult if not impossible to raise prices.

BVM is very rare and extremely hard to find. When a source is located ensure that a sample is shipped out for testing purposes. The material should be SOLID black without a single flaw and of course absolutely NO veins. Veins only wash out your image and causes the lasered image to lose focus.

IPBG is available in most tile stores/outlets and may be found under various other names. Just ensure that the specks are the smallest possible. This brings the material to it closest solid black. Keep in mind the smallest specks assist in eliminating the washed out effect a lasered image would get under larger specks. Granite specks fall under the same properties as veins in marble, which is, the lasered image tends to lose focus if the specks/veins take over the material.

Reference materials: Nylon. Fabric. Leather. Kevlar

Woods

Wood is by far the most laser friendly material available. It can be engraved or cut very easily. When engraved, lighter colored woods like cherry or maple produce very nice contrast where the laser vaporizes away the wood. This high visual contrast is what makes lighter woods so popular when combined with our LaserPro line of engravers.

There are many types of other wood products that are designed for use with the laser and many more that are waiting to be discovered by you. Every type of wood has its own characteristics. Some wood is denser than other wood, with the denser, harder woods requiring more laser power to cut or engrave. LaserPro recommends that when working with wood other than the ones listed in this section you investigate the engraving and cutting characteristics before committing to use it. There are woodworking shops in nearly every large city that will have a wealth of information on nearly all woods. Use the Internet to do a search on wood and see what you find. The most common woods used are Cherry, Walnut, Maple, Alder, and Oak.

Contact us to discuss the possibilities.

Materials:
Ipods, Laptops, USB sticks, Business Gifts, Glass, Acrylic, Stainless steel, (anodized) aluminium, Trespa, Mirrors, Plastics, Stone, Wood, Balsawood, Paper, Carton, Leather, Fleece.

Dimensions:
Maximum dimensions: 64(B) x 44(L) cm
Passthrough maximum size: 300 cm
Maximum height: 15 cm
Maximum diameter cylinder objects (bottles, drinking glasses, sport cups, pipes, rings): 12 cm

Click on the examples below to see larger image:
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