Laserable Aluminum

[Airborndaddy]

Has anyone tried to use Laserable Aluminum for award Plaques? If so any luck? I tried the other night and it looks like I'm either getting it too hot or the full coating isn't coming off right, it says to use 600 dpi. What setting is that in T2? I know .1 is 200 dpi is it linear? So .05 400 dpi? I'm going to try using Brasso or Never Dull on the piece after engraving to see if the shine comes back. I know it is designed for a 35 watt CO2 laser at 50%, 20% speed. So I hit it at 255, 200 feed rate. Maybe it needs multi pass. Any help with this would be appreciated.

[Administrator]

What are you engraving? An image? Text?

[Airborndaddy]

Text only right now!

[Airborndaddy]

This is the product I'm using http://www.johnsonplastics.com/engraving/engravable-products/metal/gloss-black-gold-020-laserable-aluminum-sheet

[Administrator]

I tried to order that product to see if I could laser on it with my 2.5 watt laser machine using BenCutLaser but I could not get past the shipping page. I tried another browser but same thing. You'd think an online company would make sure their checkout pages actually work with IE and FF, but not for me. And the pages loaded very slowly.

Let me know how it goes for you...guess I won't be able to test that product myself.

[Airborndaddy]

Does bencut allow to raster and vector text in one operation?

[Administrator]

No, BCL does not work like T2 Laser.

But, if our low power lasers can make a mark on that material, BCL can do text on it. That's what I wanted to try out.

[Airborndaddy]

The laser seems to remove the laserable coating from the surface but leave a luster less finish. Again I'm going to try an bring that back to life with Brasso or Never Dull but was just wondering if it has been done before.

[Zax]

I have various color combinations of this material, it engraves really nice at high speed with my 40W CO2 at around 12W.

I tested it with my 2500mW diode laser and it did work but there was too much melting (due to the low power) and the result wasn't anywhere near as clean.

Regarding your dpi question and T2Laser. Resolution is the inverse of dots per, and there are 25.4 mm per inch so to convert steps per mm to DPI just use 25.4 / resolution.

e.g. 25.4 / 0.1 = 254 DPI and 25.4 / 0.05 = 508 DPI.

Or the reverse, 25.4 / 600 DPI = 0.042 mm per step (resolution).

[Airborndaddy]

T2 Laser, Created File in Corel Draw, Exported to PLT file, .003 mm Parallel line spacing. 1000 feed rate 255 laser power. Brought the luster back and got rid of the burnt coating with Nevr-dull, had to use Dawn Dish Liquid to remove the Nevr-Dull residue. Looks amazing... 2.5w laser.

[Administrator]

Awesome...!!!

[Lob0426]

very nice

[Zax]

That looks fantastic. Great tip on the "Nevr-Dull".

It looks like you took my advice on using Corel with the hatching, very nice job!

I'm looking forward to your feedback on v1.3a (planning to post today) where you can combine the raster engraving with vector edges - although I think using the same settings on both will be a problem so perhaps I need to have 2 different speeds. I could perhaps use the feed rate for one and the speed for the other.

[Administrator]

I was finally able to order a sheet of this stuff from JohnsonPlastics.com...over the weekend, their link to UPS was broken, but now is working and I was able to finally place my order. I want to see how BenCutLaser handles Text on this material with my 2.5 watt laser.

[Administrator]

I received my laserable Aluminum today from JohnsonPlastics...I ordered it in black, although they had other colors.

I can't believe how great this came out (using my BenCutLaser software)...my pic is taken with my phone, at night, so the lighting isn't the best...I also had to angle the phone so as to stay out of the surface mirror glare of my flood light...it's not the sharpest photo but when I look closely at the Aluminum, it came out perfect...sharp as a tack and very easy for me to focus my laser beam on to get the right focus...and I just used my Medium burn laser tool I had created for 3mm wood...it was perfect for this material.

I can now make some awesome signs and plaques...!!!

Update: Added another attachment.