Anodized Aluminum Sheet Black 5005 Thickness: 1/16" - Not affected by laser

LightBurn Hardware Compatibility Ortur Lasers
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Anodized Aluminum Sheet Black 5005 Online, Thickness: 1/16" I know a person using Lightburn and a 7W JTech laser. The material is unaffected by that laser beam at 100% power and a speed of 1inch per minute. Has anyone else experienced such a thing and could they point me in the right direction to resolve the issue?

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Here is something similar, as far as I can tell.

I think you will have to give us move information for us to give you much help. That’s assuming that particular anodizing is etchable with that wavelength laser.

:smiley_cat:

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Thanks for the response. I will check with the person for details of the anodizing. I have no problems so far and my laser is a JTech 4.2W 445nm diode laser.

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It’s this product: Order 0.063" Anodized Aluminum Sheet Black 5005 Online, Thickness: 1/16"

The vendor says it’s not “hard anodized” nor UV protected. And it’s matte, not shiny. A sample has been sent to J Tech Photonics to see what they have to say.

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J Tech got back to me. Here’s what they had to say:

“Thanks for sending over the anodization sample. I tried it out and you are correct, you can’t get it to engrave. My 100W CO2 laser barley can engrave it. It warped the metal because I was going slow on it and the heat it absorbed made it hot. The 7W Pro made a faint mark when the focus was perfect, but it mostly just heated up the metal. I think it unfortunately just doesn’t work that well on that particular anodization.”

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I was suspicious that may have been the issue. Glad you have a good source to check with. Thanks for letting us know…

One of the issues with aluminum is it’s ability to sink heat, as the J Tech people stated.

Take care, good luck…

:smiley_cat:

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It would be good to know what the anodisation process was. I buy my anodised dog tags from the USA and they have always engraved without issue. It would be useful to find a pre-treatment if possible. I have been engraving a series of glazed ceramic tiles and a pre-treatment with flat white pain that I remove afterwards, with acetone, really helps the engraving process.

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