Hello All,
I have watched a few videos where people are laser etching text in clear Polycarbonate and the text comes out very clean and black. Seems all the videos are using a fiber laser and curious if I can get the same effect with a 100W CO2 laser.
Application is to laser etch black text into some polycarbonate tubes for measuring liquids. I can also do Acrylic if there is a way to get black text in acrylic that can handle some chemicals.
Best regards,
Marc
There being nothing like a good new problem to take your mind off all your old problems:
Huh. Totally did not expect that!
Polycarb greedily absorbs 10.6 µm infrared and through-cuts tend to be unpleasantly melty around the edges, which may account for the strands trailing downwind of the raw engraving:
That’s 400 mm/s at 20% of a 60 W CO laser in a piece of scrap polycarb, engraved with 0.1 mm scan spacing, which I used because it’s what produces shallow engraving in acrylic.
I gotta use that color for something!
Orange may be your new black …