Does anyone know what settings I would use to engrave on a silver charm for a bracelet? Wanted to do one for my friend and I don’t have time to be trying all the different settings to get it to work.
Thanks in advance.
As far as I know, GF will not engrave metals of any kind. Your options are to either use something like anodized aluminum, which is sort of like a coating, that you engrave and it comes off. The other option is something like Ceramark, which is a spray that you put on and then engrave and it bonds to the metal.
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Silver is going to be a real challenge with a laser. It has the highest heat capacity of any jewelry metal, making it far more difficult to work than gold. I would not recommend using it in the GF unless you have experience with it as a jeweler. Knowing what you are looking at just before it melts down is pretty handy.
GF will not engrave metal. If you do a search you will get lots of info on the subject.
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Thank you. I am searching for options.
You can mark on some metals using marking spray (Like Cermark or Brilliance), but not engrave. But if it’s actual silver, I wouldn’t do that.
Here’s an example with an aluminum charm.
I discovered Cermak. I won’t work for what I wanted but excited to try it for other projects.
I used cermark on plated silver and it worked great. I engraved the bowls of spoons after they were flattened. The result was black lettering which was not exactly what I was looking for but that was user error I am sure.
Black or dark grey lettering is all you’re going to get.
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You’ll want to use Cermark if you’re going to do that with a GF. I do stainless steel items with it but now I have two fiber lasers so they do all of my metal engraving. If you do use cermark, apply it, let it dry, laser it, wipe it off. Don’t let it sit on the metal for longer than necessary. Note that cermark is VERY expensive. And once you mark the metal with it, you can’t undo. So go get some silver that you can work with to test.
In this case, I’d take it to a jeweler to engrave mechanically.
For settings - mine for Cermark on stainless steel for a PRO were:
Speed: 140
Power: 65
Grayscale: Convert to dots.
Lines per inch: 340
No of Passes: 1
That gave a pure black, but took a lot of tests. If you have a basic machine your settings will be different. And every metal is different.
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Go on… which models?
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Thank you for the information. I do have a pro and for future projects will try out your settings.
Deanna
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I have my two fiber lasers from Debin Lee, 11.8" bed, 175 and 300. We primarily use the 175 since most of our work is small, but have the 300 should we want to do larger plaques.
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