I was given a wallet for Christmas, and while it’s not anything fancy I wanted to make it a bit unique and engrave the metal part. I know a few people have done the wallets that use the slider spring, was wondering if anyone had any settings suggestions.
The space available
I haven’t, but I’d start with the lightest of the anodized aluminum settings. Do you know what you’re going to engrave?
Probably something skull related…or maybe a majestic battle owl…not really sure yet 
Are you sure that’s anodized? The surface quality is a little bit suspect. Maybe a magnet test to make sure you’re not dealing with steel that’s been coated?
0 magnetic pull, used a heavy duty magnet, I have a feeling they used cheap aluminum for the casing and the spring
I can’t tell from the photo: is there a back side or other inconspicuous spot where you could do a test (e.g., your initials or something)?
Not really, I think it’s glued to the leather inside, I may just get my awl out and give it a scratch test
Ah, well.
I gave away some of the black Altoid type tins with gift cards this year. I thought it was anodized aluminum, but when I have done business cards or dogtags in the past, the engrave was just there…no extra steps needed. When I did these tins, the engraved part became liquid and after the job, I had to use a baby wipe to clean the black off and show the silver below.
What power and speed settings did you use for those?
Whatever is in there for Silver Macbook. That is what I used for the dogtags and aluminum business cards as well. I figure that it is aluminum, so the laser isn’t going through. If I am overzapping it, I don’t really care. Interestingly, however, when you look inside the lids of the tins, you can see “outdentations?” (raised areas where the laser hit the other side of the metal), so not sure how much more you would need to push through. They were slight, so probably a lot more.
I once overpowered an engrave on very thin metal cards and it actually warped the metal permanently. So there is such a thing as too much in some cases, but I don’t know how thick the metal is in this scenario.
I’ve done that with an dead MacBook pro panel already and that wasn’t that heavy of a burn
