Process Date: May 1999

This application shows off the laser’s ability to create high quality marks on even the tiniest of surfaces – marking alphanumerics on 0.025"-thick wire! The resulting character height of this application is 0.018", with a line width of 0.0026".

The wrap around the circumference of the wire is within the lens’ depth of focus, so a highly visible mark was produced.

Additionally, the Synrad Applications Lab has successfully marked 0.01" high characters on surface mount ceramic capacitors, with a line width of 0.002"!

Even though the focused spot of the 69CH lens is 0.004", both of these materials have high marking thresholds, so only the center of the Gaussian beam has sufficient marking energy at these speeds. This results in undersized line widths that allow reduced character size resolution.

 
Tungsten Carbide wire, marked with 98W, 1"/s 69mm lens.