Finally caught a video close enough to the upload that Robert might see my comment. Thank you for all the motivational shop and project videos you've made over the years. I've been working on my Husky shelving units all day today which will be a workbench/X1 home/filament storage. I love your channel and I really appreciate all the amazing ideas you've come up with. My shop has so many things that were inspired by your videos!! Keep up the amazing work!!
Just as another data point, my functionally stock K40 (CO2 & Gantry Laser as opposed to Fiber and Galvo) works pretty good for engraving PLA, it ablates it well enough that I can print a few layers of my "text" color and then print a couple layers of my "face" color and then laser engrave it and it'll show the under-color where I engrave it. I've gotten text, logos etc. far smaller than I ever could with a printer.
I had a K40, they're fun little machines. I always found that it still looked a little bit like melted plastic rather than this two-tone look from the fiber. But I was able to get some fine details.
That sharpie would be a great trick for all sorts of light and colored filaments. How does it hold up against rubbing? Might be interesting to test different paints and see how they hold up to wear
Yeah, I glossed over it in the video, but it's something I'll visit again. You could do the opposite of what I did, laser off everything BUT the design, etc. It could be a good way to add lettering to light materials.
I've used sharpie for some markings in PLA and it hasn't held up in the long term. Would be interesting to see how the laser marks in something that bonds more strongly to the plastic, (UV cure epoxy paints or something?)
It was a clever type of material which changes colour significantly when the laser hits it. Similar to how dashboard button are black but engraved with white markings. I believe the plastic is designed to turn white when exposed to the right wavelength.
@@bonjipooI believe it's due to the addition of one of the titanium "oxides" (I just can't remember exactly which one). Essentially it will react with the laser much better and produce a cleaner marking when the laser beam hits it.
Prusament PLA Galaxy Black turned out spectacular, almost white using a moving gantry GCC Laser Pro S290 LS (60w fiber laser) full power, and default scanning speed. A more blackish filament did not do as great, became more brownish… as did Prusament jet black PETG
Perhaps try doing a material test grid that comes standard in Lightburn. I've been working on some product designs and did a lot of 3D printed test pieces on my Ikier Fiber laser with the test grid to find what works and doesn't. Blue should work well. Yellow, Red and White just don't work in my experience. Blacks and grey, most greens do work. I print 100x100mm PLA flat test pieces which allow a decent material grid test for power and speed.
I actually like the ones where the contrast isn't super high. That dark blue looked cool. I guess it depends on the design and use-case. Sometimes low contrast is fine.
Just FYI: the xtool F1 has a 1064nm galvo as one of its two galvo lasers. The other is 455nm. Both are diode. You select which is used via software; no hardware fiddling required.
Yep, I'm aware. They've been trying to send me one for the last year! I suspect that 2W wouldn't be enough. Also, they're not a pulsed laser like a true fiber. It might get close, but it won't be as crisp.
@@RobertCowanDIYI've marked a fair few materials with our laser pecker LP3 which is a 1W 1064Nm fibre. You can get decent markings from it but due to it being 1W it's very slow indeed lol
@@zaprodk Fibers can do more, but many people seem under the impression that the IR diode can't do anything. It's simply not the case. You wouldn't want one as your primary tool if you want deep 2.5D engraving, but for names, images, or shallow depth, they work fine.
This is fascinating, thanks for sharing! I'd wondered about doing this for 3d terrain maps, if a laser could etch trails on it. The challenge would be the variable height of terrain and needing to change the focus point? I have no idea if that's something a laser can do (i.e. convert the elevation model into some kind of height/focus command).
I found out about marking pla quite by accident. I have the same laser you have and was marking something and didn't have it set right, and the laser beam hit the pla chuck I had made. Since then, I have used it to mark several things. Great video!
Very nice! I get the same results on black PETG with my 60W MOPA fiber. I get slightly better results with my 5W UV. I've never messed with multi-colored 3D prints, so the laser marking has definitely come in handy. (I saved several failed prints so that Id have plenty of material to do material tests on.)
I do need to try this again. On previous tests, I was not too happy with the results I got - just not sharp enough for my liking. I then switched to white PLA that I spray painted black, so kind of your sharpie trick, and that gave me a result that I was very happy with: a black surface with very sharp bright white symbols. UV fiber has a complete different wave length than the IR one you have. A UV fiber is able to mark on white plastics and even on glass, something that is not possible with the 1064 nm IR fiber laser.
@@RobertCowanDIYIR and UV are certain ranges of wavelength in the light spectrum. The visible light ranges from violet, blue, green, yellow and orange to red. Left of this (below purple) the UV (ultra violet) spectrum is found (100-380 nm) and all on the right side there is IR (infra red, 760 - 14000 nm). The fiber in fiber laser just tells us where the "lasing" takes place. In a CO2 glass tube laser, there are two mirrors on each side of the tube so the light bounces back and forth between those to create the laser beam. In a fiber laser this process takes place inside the special fiber (this is oversimplifying the process but kind of explains why it is called a fiber laser). A UV fiber laser has a ~355 nm wavelength, an IR fiber 1064 nm and the CO2 laser tube 10600 nm. UV is great for plastics (even white plastic) and glass, the IR fiber has limited abilities on plastics but is great for metals and (dark colored) paints. The very long wavelength of a CO2 laser tube will blast through anything. You can cut through a lot of different materials with this one and engrave them when using lower power settings.
Great vid. I was hoping for a eureka moment but you've confirmed exactly what I found. I would add you can actually get a nice black on white ASA but nothing on white PLA. It was the only light color it worked on, bloody annoying.
The wavelength is important, but the fact that you have a pulsed laser is a lot more important. The higher the frequency of pulse, the smaller the time domain is of the light pulse getting there. It starts to vaporize, then cool repeatedly. Do it high enough and you can cut metals. Do it really high and you can cut through sapphire, glass, pretty much anything. It isn't a perfect analogy, but it is a little like an impact driver vs a normal drill driver.
Yeah, I suspect you might get a result with a normal diode laser, but it probably won't be as clean. Under a microscope, it's effectively completely removed all pigment from the area. A diode laser might do something similar, but not as effective.
@@RobertCowanDIYIt is hard to do photochemical damage at that long of a wavelength. You usually need to get into the UV range. Can you put the laser in CW mode, or turn the pulse rate way down? My guess is you would see more melty damage and less vaporization.
Finally a great video on marking 3d prints! Thank you! Do you happen to have some Prusament PETG V0 Jet Black swatches to try laser marking on? Making self-extinguishing battery enclosures and then cleanly marking the specs on it would look so professional. Great video as always man!
I don't have any, but I suspect it would look very similar to the plain PETG. I don't think the V0 rating would have anything to do with how well it worked.
HAHA. Oh, I know. I originally only had a few, but when they started looking cool, I added a lot more colors. I absolutely said that to myself as I was printing off swatches. That being said, I can't imagine doing that for ALL my filaments, this was a huge pain in the ass.
Not sure if it's of any use to hobbyists looking to laser but I've personally managed to laser Markforged Onyx, Stratasys ABS-CF10 and Nylon-CF10, and Stratasys ASA (Green) ABS (blue and ivory) and their black TPU with great success. I think it honestly will depend on material brand on whether you'll get decent results if I'm honest
Great stuff. It would be interesting to test this with wood PLA to see if it's possible to get an effect similar to laser engraving on wood. I'm going to have to try that.
I don't think it would be any different than what I showed. The wavelength of the fiber doesn't do anything to wood, so it will only affect the pigments.
I should get a fiber laser. This is super cool and gave me ton's of ideas for products :O I have a 40w CO2 and I've known for a while that I'll eventually have to get a fiber laser. This looks to be the push for it :D By the way, what happens with resin prints? I primarily print in resin, so I am very interested if that works as well
You really should ;-) A fiber and a CO2 is the place to be. Diodes are neat and all, but they can't do anything a fiber or CO2 can do. I've never actually done any resin prints, it's just too messy and too much maintenance and from what I understand the parts aren't as durable as those from FDM. I'd suspect the process would work the same, since it's just the pigment that's getting vaporized.
@@RobertCowanDIY I have not much experience with tough resins, but regular ones do hold pretty badly. They tend to fail tragically. Shattering usually. It is not that messy. I find it has way less hassle than FDM. Most FDM printers need a bunch of maintenance. Clean lead screws, tighten belts, tune many many things.... Resin is different but the machines are extremely simple and need nigh no maintenance :D Give it a shot. The learning curve of supporting is not that bad - it takes some time. But afterwards they tend to be way more stable, less failures, easy process. Most print jobs for me are about 30 min prep, 30 min post processing and that's it. Getting a pretty decent printer with a wash and cure is also not a big deal - you can get a nice set for about 3-400 bucks, which gives you a nice machine with all the tools for cleaning and post curing.
you could use glass with black ink on it as a stencil to use above the parts it would layer the ink down on the glass laser over it and possibly being able to clean the glass on the moveing way back and apply a new ink stencil on the glass... its a new way, its new technology i make in private just for me, you test and try smile ☺ ☺
@RobertCowanDIY yeah I felt the same way. Ezcad is serviceable, but once I tried LightBurn it was just so much better. Just and FYI though, don't bother trying to pirate LightBurn. I made that mistake 😂. The developers buried some code somewhere in LightBurn so that if people pirate it, your laser will start randomly burning the words "LightBurn is two developers. You are stealing our livelihood" onto your work pieces in the middle of jobs ever so often. LightBurn is actually well worth the one time purchase in my opinion.
There might be a way to get good results from a CO2 laser, but I suspect it wouldn't move fast enough to be usable. My xTool P2 apparently maxes out at 600mm/sec, but I've found it's only really usable until around 500mm/sec, which is still 1/6th the speed I was going in the video. CO2 also has worse power regulation down low, so you might not be able to control the low end of the power well enough for those slower speeds.
OMG... Robert.. Were you reading my mind. I have a large project coming up and was just researching this. Thank you for the video. Now which laser to buy.
I bought an XTool F1 Laser just to laser etch my PETG prints and got it to look really decent, HOWEVER! How scratch resistant are your laser etched prints? Take your fingernail and lightly graze over the etch...in my testing it comes off so easy that I wouldn't put out a product of that low quality. (I make keychains) I tried to spray a layer of clearcoat on it to increase scratch resistance and it killed the etch making it so dark it was unreadable.
Interesting, mine seem more durable than that. It's not as durable as metal marking, but good enough for basic labeling. The clearcoat trick should fix it if necessary though, thanks!
For the past week I have been experimenting with the diode laser to engrave markings, after watching your video, I will experiment with lowering the power to see if that will achieve a similar effect as whar you jusr showed
Nice! Let me know what you find out. I would assume diode lasers could get pretty similar results, it just might take more tweaking. In theory, I'm running (on average) around 20% power on a 50W laser, so 10W at full power should be enough to achieve similar results, assuming you can move it fast enough and have the right wavelength.
@@RobertCowanDIY my 3w diode laser at 100% melts ASA while bleaching it at the same time. I think I need to go way lower. The laser is 450nm wavelength
@@RobertCowanDIY After further investigation, only the Carbon fiber infused PETG was engraving, ASA was getting bleached. However, as I was using red color ASA, the markings are not very high contrast. Probably would have worked better on a darker color ASA. PS, this is Hilmi who commented earlier, just using my official RU-vid account to comment
Can you try using white on the layer below the top layer and ablating the top layer to expose the white layer below? The top layer can be an ironing layer for a thin coat over the white.
@robert; I didn't see your calibration video you talked about @9:25. I only saw (and watched) your beginners guide hatching. I have a brand new cloudray mopa laser and would like to calibrate the hatch settings like you did in your video.
@@RobertCowanDIY I must have missed the "calibration" part of the video. Can you provide a time index where you measured and then used that measurement to adjust a setting in the software?
@RobertCowanDIY he means to have a thin final black top print layer ( 0.1-0.3 layer height ) on white PLA and laser / burn away the black. That might work on any PLA, PETG etc...
It does. I have an enclosure for it, but I typically don't use it when I film. The computer for controlling it is opposite, so my back is literally to the machine and I'm watching it through the camera's external monitor. I will be doing a video soon on the enclosure.
can you please suggest a laser engraver for engraving 3D prints? I don't need huge surfaces and I'm fine with something not super expensive, but I'm ok with paying for quality
I like either Cloudray or xTool. For 3d prints, you don't need much power, so just get one that's the right size for your needs and the lowest power offering should save you some money. For hobbyist use, xTool is great, for a more business environment (or if you're looking to do more advanced stuff) Cloudray is the way to go.
wow, i dont get how black plastic get a lighter color when engraved on?? i have engraved on acrylics and plastic before, but they dont change color, can you explain?
you REALLY need to just play around with it. I'm usually around 20%, 2000mm/sec and the highest frequency it will let me type in there. But each color is different even.
@@gbradley10021oh, gotcha! You might be able to, but I'm not sure how practical it would be. The focal plane is fairly small, so it would need to be flat. Ironing in the printer would be far more effective
