Well my machine must know I was considering replacing it because today it decided that 7 years was enough and it won’t take no more. Some electrical snafu that won’t even let me turn it on without blowing fuses on it. I’m tired of throwing good money at bad so fine it’s time for something more modern. My problem is I can’t decide what route to go.
90% of what I do is to support my custom pens. I need to be able to engrave a wide variety of materials but primarily a polyurethane resin mixed with all sorts of pigments, micas and various other colorful sparkly bits. My K40 did this but the engraving always looked melted and messy even at its best.
I would also really like to be able to bring my nib engraving in-house. Mostly stainless steel that is either polished or gold plated, but also on occasion 14 or 18k gold and titanium. I know a fiber is best for this but I’m okay with a reliable marking as well. It doesn’t absolutely have to be deep etched.
The other 10% is cutting transparent or translucent acrylics for display stands and other various odds and ends.
Unfortunately I feel like I need 3 distinct lasers and it’s making it very hard to decide what route to go. A Diode / IR combination gets me about 60% of what I want but falls flat on the transparent acrylic needs and is exceptionally slow at metal marking. A fiber will get me metal but again no acrylics and hit or miss performance on the pen body materials. A CO2 will get me back to meh pen body engraving and all the other larger format stuff but no metal.
Any suggestions from the brain trust?
