Hi, would like to know the answer of my question. I have a 20W dual laser engraver, (fiber + diode), and the fiber laser source may be raycus. 
I had reached out online for color laser engraving, most of the blogs talks about mopa fiber laser engraver, while I did see some youtubers do color laser engraving without a mopa laser, but didn’t tell the reason, so wether some of you guys also did color engraving without a mopa laser?
You can do “color” “engraving” with a diode laser. The results depend on the laser and material. I think the advantage of MOPA is the finer degree of control.
Lasers are 90% experiment and 10% success. I made this up, but a lot of experimenting is for sure. Use what you find online as a guideline, because it is rarely a solution.
It doesn’t depend (directly) on the laser type. The color change is created by applying heat to the metal. Any technique or laser that can create that specific heat levels is sufficient. You can also put the metal in a candle flame and it will change color. It is also heavily dependent on the metal type, thickness, ambient temperature and more factors. MOPAs give great control of the power input into the material and have a fitting wavelength for steel and are therefore well suited usually. But others can do as well. A 2W IR diode laser head can do it, too.
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Hi.
Made up or not, absolutely true though.
Generally anyway.
Simpler, more straight forward tasks may have quite significantly better success rate, while on the other hand coaxing the exact heat treating colours uniformly across a larger (~than a fingernail) surface area on a metal surface with more or less unknown composition may well fall onto around 1%.
Especially if the laser isn’t particularily well suited for the task.
Regards,
Sam
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I’ll try this, thanks.
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