Newsletter 135: Marking Alumina Ceramic, Marking Rulan, Marking PBT

SYNRAD, INC. - http://www.synrad.com
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Issue 135


Marking Alumina Ceramic Components	Marking Machined Rulan Parts	Marking PBT

SYNRAD's sealed CO₂ lasers are used in a variety of industrial processes including cutting, welding, drilling, and marking. This news brief showcases some of the interesting materials and products that are processed daily by Synrad's line of CO2 lasers and marking heads.

Marking Alumina Ceramic Components

Alumina ceramic material is used in numerous electronic and industrial electrical components. Alumina’s high electrical resistance and dielectric strength makes it a perfect insulation material for products such as capacitors, fuse blocks, and even automotive spark plug bodies.

This application calls for laser marking component data on a ceramic fuse link body to replace a screen-printing operation. Our marking setup consists of a Firestar t-Series t100 laser and an FH Series marking head equipped with a 125 mm high-power lens. The customer’s mark data was contained in a DXF file, which we imported directly into WinMark Pro. Within the DXF file, all alphanumeric characters were drawn using crosshatch lines so that the image has the filled look of a bitmap, but the faster marking speed of a vector graphic.

We marked all the information on this fuse link housing in 8.8 seconds using 100 watts of power
at a speed of 10 inches per second.

We achieved the mark shown using 100 watts of power with a Velocity of 254 mm per second (10 inches/second) at a Resolution setting of 300. We achieved a nicely contrasting image on the alumina in a cycle time of 8.8 seconds per part.

Marking Machined Rulan Parts

Introduced back in 1952, Rulon® is a specially-compounded form of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) that has found widespread use as the wear-resistant bearing material of choice for bearings, bushings, thrust washers, O-rings, and many other molded and machined components. Parts manufactured from Rulon require zero lubrication and can withstand severe temperatures and corrosive chemicals. In fact, the ‘J’ formulation of Rulon offers the lowest coefficient of friction of any reinforced PTFE material.

The goal of this project was to create readable part numbers on machined Rulon J piston assemblies using a Synrad sealed CO₂ laser and an FH Series Index marking head. The Index head was fitted with a 125 mm focusing lens that provides a 180-micron (0.007”) spot size with a 3-mm (0.118”) depth of focus across the entire mark field.

The machined Rulon assembly shown above
exhibits a high-contrast engraved mark using
25 watts of power. The total cycle time for the
18-character mark is 0.22 seconds.

In WinMark Pro’s Drawing Editor, we created an 18-character, 2-line manufacturing code using the ‘Simple’ stroke font. We set a Text Height of 1.6 mm (0.062”) and added 0.13 mm (0.005”) of Extra Character Spacing. To mark the piston assemblies, we set a Power (duty cycle percentage) corresponding to 25 watts, a Resolution of 600, and a mark Velocity of 254 mm per second (10”/s). At these settings, we created high-contrast engraved marks on the Rulon material at cycle times of 0.22 seconds per part.

Marking PBT

PBT, polybutylene terephthalate, is an engineered thermoplastic polyester that exhibits many desirable traits including exceptional resistance to chemicals, heat, and stress cracking; excellent dimensional stability; and an extremely low rate of water absorption. Different grades of PBT are created using reinforcing materials such as fiberglass, stainless steel, or carbon fibers and various additives provide UV stabilization and flame-retardant properties.

We tested PBT’s ability to provide readable text and 2D codes on this sample coupon using a Firestar t-Series laser and an FH Series marking head equipped with a 125 mm high-power lens. This lens provides a 180-micron (0.007”) spot size over an 80 mm by 99 mm (3.2” × 3.9”) nominal mark field.

For this application we marked human-readable
text and a Data Matrix code on PBT material
using 25 watts of power. The marks were created
in a cycle time of 0.64 sec.

To create the mark file we added a 27-character, 2-line text object using the ‘Simple’ stroke font and set a Text Height of 2.4 mm (0.094”) and 0.25 mm (0.01”) of Extra Character Spacing. For the 21-character Data Matrix™ code, we set a 2D Barcode Cell Size of 0.41 mm (0.016”), toggled 2D Barcode Bitmap to ‘No’ (to mark individual vector circles instead of raster filled squares), and then reduced 2D Barcode Circle Radius to 70%.

To mark these objects we used 25 watts of Power and a Resolution value of 300. We specified a Velocity of 762 mm per second (30”/s) for the text object and 1143 mm/sec (45”/s) for the 2D code object. The overall cycle time required to mark both the Data Matrix code and human-readable text was 0.64 seconds. Using an RVSI CM4000 vision system, we are able to consistently achieve 13 millisecond read times when scanning the resulting engraved 2D code.

Browse Synrad's Applications Database

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Contact Us:

Synrad, Inc.

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Mukilteo, WA 98275

Tel: 1-425-349-3500

Fax: 1-425-349-3667

E-mail: synrad@synrad.com

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