Simple cheap test - stainless = YES white tile=NO

Finished Creations
21

Jack, yes, that’s the article I have read, probably linked in this forum. From providers of a costly alternative to the process, but I have not reason not to believe them, on the chemical safety side.

Samuli: safe to use is indeed paramount. And indeed, sometime US people mention stuff which is much harder to find in France / Europe (some paints, vanishes, etc.), or costly to get (shipping fees, some shops don’t even ship abroad, etc.). Sometime, shipping fees are above the price of the stuff!

Another problem is to find out what material there is really in the stuff we want to buy. Particularly on Amazon (or AliExpress and similar), where to get as much keywords as possible, vendors can put together “baltic birch” and “balsa”, or “aluminium” and “steel”, you cannot know if acrylic is cast or extruded (I suppose if it is cheap, it is cast), and might have three different weights in the title, the description and the technical data.

22

Thanks Sam!

23

Hi.

It sure is, and it often seems that most people dismiss it completely.
And label any mention about safety fearmongering or nannyspeak.
Sad and strange if someone asks me.

True.
Goes the other way as well though, it’s sometimes (/surprisingly often) unfeasible to move stuff across that particular pond in either direction, and OTOH very feasible from the far east.
Go figure.

That’s something I’ve always wondered about, must have something to do with US or individual state legislation.
Fortunately there’s a thriving business of freight forwarding because of that, so there’s a (costly) workaround if one just have to have something that the company or reseller for some reason refuses to ship directly.

Absolutely true as well.
Fortunately, there’s a way to alleviate that problem.
Unfortunately, that way is money.

If the materials are purchased from a reputable company that provides full technical documents, it’s pretty safe to say that what You buy is what You get.
But, the price is guaranteed to be high -or at least significantly higher than from Ali’s or evilbay-, and if buying straight from the manufacturer, also the minimum quantity often being rather high may well mean that there’s material for several lifetimes of whatever one wants to do with the material.
The same often goes with some of the suppliers as well.

About the only feasible option is IMO to buy from the hobbyists or suppliers who buy larger quantities and divide it into smaller pieces.
Or to become one :thinking: .

In any case, it’s never a waste of time to test a new material batch before starting a long job, even if there’s little or no doubt that the material is exactly the same as the previous batch.
Especially with plywood or other selluloce based materials.

AFAIK there isn’t a plywood available that’s specifically manufactured in large quantities for to be laser cut, only varities that are better suited for it.
That obviously means that as the ability to be laser cut is not a property that’s specified, the properties (of the adhesives or chemical treatments for example) can be changed if manufacturing or economics require without notice, as long as the original specifications are met.

You’re welcome.

Regards,
Sam

:finland:

24

Just a quick addition to Sam’s fine answer. Most of the birch plywood we could buy in Europe was from Russia. After their vicious invasion of Ukraine, most goods from Russia were banned. Many were not even aware of where their material came from, just that it was cheap.
I personally have always used interior glued plywood from Koskyply / Finland for my lamp production. It is not cheap but guaranteed “laser suitable”. They also have a product line called aeroply interior and exterior, it is used for model building and also furniture, very beautiful material.
(…Koskyply exterior is of course not intended for laser processing, it can be cut with lots of power, but…)

25

Being fairly new to the hobby, this surprised me with slate. I expect it with wood since every tree harvested could be from a different location or age, even when the same species. Slate, however, I expected to be far more uniform. I’m no geologist, so it was easy to assume. And I made an arse of myself because of it. Bought a moderate size batch from a certain retailer and used it up. I was fairly pleased with the price/quality ratio so I ordered a second, larger, batch. Put a set in my fixture and started the job. Came back 20 minutes later and immediately cancelled the job. It was obvious by that point the previous setting were not going to work. It only took one piece to get it dialed back in but my assumption meant I lost three from the cancelled job. Live and learn.

26

All are slate… with these, one type turns light, the other dark.

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Both of these were done on a fiber. Note the difference in texture and color, usually using a higher interval.

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This was a piece of 1x2’ slate tile… I ran this job to completion, I shut down the machine and went to eat dinner… 5 or 10 minutes later we heard a loud pop, and I found the slate shattered…

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IMHO, if it’s made by nature, it’s all different… :crossed_fingers:

Even when you test it, you still have to expect some natural anomalies.

:smile_cat:

27

A tip from here, I engrave my initials/date or logo relatively small on the back - before I start the task itself on the front. It allows some control as to whether my settings are suitable for this type of slate.

28

Hi.

True.
Even over here.

Because of our rather colourful neighbourly history through the last few hundered years, not all companies have been willing to admit that the supplier is in Russia (or was in USSR).
In addition, quite a bit of freight from China and India came through Russia by rail, and that has obviously pretty much dried up as well.
As it should IMO.

Yep, even as most of our mechanical forestrý companies -other than paper and pulp- have closed their doors, we do still have quite a few left.
And their products all have two things in common, the quality is superb, and the price reflects that.
At the moment as those companies obviously won’t be able to use Russian raw timber, the prices have gone up more.

Very true, and the same usually goes with glazed products and ceramics.

Minerals are difficult to mark/engrave with laser(s) for different reasons than the celluloce based materials are, but difficult none the less.
Lasers operate in such a narrow wavelength band, that even a minute difference in crystal forming of the mineral can make a huge difference in how it marks/engraves with a particular laser.
OTOH, with a different wavelength laser, there may not be any difference.

That’s truly a great tip :slight_smile:.
Kind of obvious when you think about it, but I for one wouldn’t thought of that.
I would’ve probably run a material test, thus ruining that particular piece.

Regards,
Sam

:finland:

29

I’ve been considering building a maker mark that incorporates a simple and tiny “material test”. Perhaps a gradient with the company name in relief. Something visually pleasing but technical enough to be useful.

30

Hi.

A brilliant idea as well.
Two birds, one stone and all that.

Regards,
Sam

:finland:

31

Off-topic:

Even after most products from Russia were banned, i could buy birch plywood for almost three times the price. I don’t think there is a real ban.

On-topic:

Stainless material test.
No cleaning before lasering.
White carbon paper - no single mark.

Compared to the previous ones, different manufacturers give different results.

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2012-SE-8693-SDS-CARBON-PAPER.pdf.txt (99.1 KB)

32

Hi.

Not nearly all birch plywood comes -or in this case came- from Russia, only the cheapest varities.
And lots and lots of it.
There are plenty of manufacturers in the baltic and scandinavia (and Finland, we are not actually part of either one of those regions even though we like to think so when ever it suits us), as well as in Canada, but for many reasons the price of the “western” manufacturers birch plywood has been twice or thrice the price of Russian plywood even before the invasion.

What makes the end user damn near impossible to know exactly what plywood -or where it was originally manufactured- they’re buying, is that individual sheets are rarely (if ever) stamped or stenciled, the markings are in the sides of the stacks or even just in the wrappers.
Counterfeiting the markings in timber products is also very much a thing, and a very lucrative business at that for those with somewhat questionable moral standards.

Of course, the suppliers and resellers in the west have increased the price of the remaining stocks of plywood regardless of the country of origin.
And just as it the case with most of the products we like to use, the price driven market had made us dependent of cheap(er) products from economically lower structured places, so when #2 hits the fan, our own manufacturing capacity -if it even exists anymore- can’t keep up with the demand.
So prices go up for that reason as well.

While there’s always individuals who will find ways to go around the restrictions for monetary -and in rare instances ideological- gain no matter what the restriction, and while no ban in the modern world is as effective as in paper, there is most certainly a real ban.
As there always in cases like this should.
Regardless of the agressor or aggressee.

While the manufacturer can play a role in that, the composition of the stainless material plays a bigger role.
As does variety, in broad terms: whether it is austenitic, martensitic or ferritic.
Not so much directly as the composition does, but indirectly since all of those varities have their more or less dedicated uses.

Snce this method is based on manipulating the thin oxide layer that forms on the surface of the stainless material, anything and everything that affects the oxide layer, affects the transfer result as well.

The combined material test and logo suggested earlier by @cggorman or just the logo suggested by @bernd.dk will make things much easier in the long run.

Regards,
Sam

:finland:

33

I’m away from my computer, so I can’t show it, but I did put together a second draft of a combined test/maker-mark. It’s not elegant and needs some more tweaking but this weekend I tried a first draft on a not-cheap cutting board that I had a close (but not identical) material test equivalent for and very much didn’t want to buy a second exclusively for testing. The equivalent material test was from peeled veneer of the same species, where the board was mixed edge and face grain solid wood. It worked pretty good. It gave me just enough confidence in my settings that I decided I could do a 5 hour, 4-tone shaded engrave on the front. I called it “close enough” and the customer signed off on the proof photos.

34

It can for sure

35

.
Austenitic it certainly can’t be, but it could be ferritic martensitic or duplex. but… oh my now I have to find a scrap of stainless steel that will allow me to do all the tests on the same piece. damn! Maybe another spatula… :smiley: :smiley:

I also engrave my initials and production date on the back, but only on the products I create. On the ones I get off the net, only the date for reference.

36

Hi.

In this case perhaps, but generally speaking anything is possible when dealing with products that are claimed to be made out of “stainless steel”.
It’s also not that uncommon to find out that even if marketed as such, the material isn’t actually stainless steel by grading, but some other corrosion resistant variety.
Sometimes even plated.
Those marketing tactics by themselves doesn’t necessarily mean that the material/product isn’t well suited to be used in the original application, but does mean that the oxide layer we transfer or mark onto may be significantly different than what we think/hope it is.

There’s no reason why a simple material test can’t be included onto a date or initials, but a logo can obviously hold more information.

Regards,
Sam

:finland:

37

After testing carbon paper on glossy white tiles, I concluded that it doesn’t work, maybe on glass…
I’ll have to organize the thread and start adding the tests to the first post so that everything is tidy.

38

Porcelain tile is glass, at least the finished side of it, as far as I knew,…

:smile_cat:

39

Yes, but on tiles it’s “foggy” and not noticeable, on glass it can work by “fogging up” the transparency.