In the example shown, a powder-coated steel part was marked using only 25 watts of power.

Although steel and stainless steel parts are commonly laser marked “as-is”, the addition of a paint or anodize coating helps to reduce cycle times and lower costs since the installation of a lower power laser is possible. Coatings also make it possible to mark non-ferrous metals such as aluminum, copper, and brass with CO₂ lasers.

We began by installing a 125 mm lens to an FH Series marking head. This lens provides a 180-micron (0.007”) spot size with a 3 mm (0.118”) depth of focus over an 86 mm x 106 mm mark field. In WinMark Pro, we created a three-line, 28-character text object and set a Text Height of 3 mm (0.125”), set Text Justification to Center, and added 0.25 mm (0.01”) of Extra Character Spacing. On the Marking tab, we set Power (duty cycle percentage) to correspond to a power level of 25 watts and then set a marking Velocity of 75 inches per second. At these settings, the mark was completed in a time of 0.28 seconds per part.