Black Image Engraving on Brass with ComMarker B4

Initial Revision 4/10/2023

Property of Paul Ruby of PaulRubyAmplifiers.com

Copyright© 2023.

Contents

Brass Prep. 1

Sheet Brass. 1

Cleaning Pass. 1

Getting Nice Black Etching. 1

Image Test. 1

DISCLAIMER. 1

See Also:

Direct PCB Etching: https://paulrubyamplifiers.com/PCB_Tutorial.html

Black Image marking on Brass: https://paulrubyamplifiers.com/Black_Image_Engraving_on_Brass_ComMarkerB4.html

Frequency range: https://paulrubyamplifiers.com/FrequencyAndSpeed_ComMarkerB4.html

Brass Prep

Sheet Brass

Get some sheet brass to play with. Mine came from Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KRLB7N5

It’ll end up looking a bit of a mess…

Also get a cheap USB microscope to study results. This is what I got…

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00XNYXQHE

Cleaning Pass

When engraving solid text or graphics, no prep is needed.

An image, however, will leave some spots unengraved which should be bright brass.

Some prep is usually needed prior to an image engraving.

This can be done with one or more cleaning passes of the laser.

A cleaning pass is a cross-hatch fill of the area holding the image.

The fill is fast and hot with the laser to leave a bright shiny surface.

You may need to play with settings to get a surface prep that shows no evidence of the cross hatch.

Small changes in line interval and speed will change the dot pattern.

Here’s a microscope view of one example of a good cleaning pass.

5000mm/s, 50um line pitch, 45-degree crosshatch, 150khz, 100% power, 4 passes.

You should run a speed/interval test on your machine.

UPDATE: Recent study shows the max frequency is between 60khz and 70khz:

https://paulrubyamplifiers.com/FrequencyAndSpeed_ComMarkerB4.html

No point running any higher than 70khz. Results will not change.

Getting Nice Black Etching

The cleaning passes should be done prior to finding settings for getting nice black etching as well.

You should run your own speed/power testing for getting crisp black etching.

The following examples all use 0.1mm line spacing, which should leave a clear gap between etch lines.

20khz frequency fails to give a crisp black line.

Here’s a subset of the power speed test at 20khz.

40% power is giving a dark black but the etched line width is almost filling the gap between lines.

This example at 125khz yields a proper 50um line width without filling the gap between lines.

100mm/s at 100% power and 125khz gives very good results.

UPDATE: Recent study shows the max frequency is between 60khz and 70khz:

https://paulrubyamplifiers.com/FrequencyAndSpeed_ComMarkerB4.html

No point running any higher than 70khz. Results will not change.

Image Test

Here’s an example image done on brass sheet at 100mm/s, 100% power, 125khz and one pass.

This image is 39mm diameter at 635DPI.

The image came from Luki Krew: https://www.laser-pics.com/image/others-kasia-306c0/

Note the shiny part of the top of the skull has no black etching at all.

The cleaning pass is in full view, which is why it’s so important.

If your image is not dark enough, run another pass or two.

If your image is too dark, you can run a cleaning pass after the black etch.

This is not deep-engraved. It’s merely blackened.

Here’s a close-up microscope view of the same image.

The cleaning pass is plainly visible as well as the black engraving lines.

DISCLAIMER

Last updated April 06, 2023

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