Annealing a Stainless Steel Bottle Opener
CNCROi.com does lots of stainless steel annealing, that’s because our Austrian CNC laser has both a fiber laser tube (this does the annealing) and a CO2 laser tube (this does everything else). Today, we’ll anneal a stainless steel bottle opener!
There are a lot of different technologies used to add branding and markings onto stainless steel but let me tell you a little secret, fiber laser annealing is the only one that’s PERMANENT.
In this case, we’ll use a blank 304 stainless steel bottle opener which we’ll use our specialized fiber laser tube with fiber lens (another expensive investment btw) and use a little 220/240 volts of electricity to permanently anneal the surface with a logo and wording of our own design.
The process, as you can see, doesn’t add or remove any material from the stainless steel. UV printing, sublimation, regular transference technologies and so forth, all ADD something to the metal which is why it will fade, crack and peel off within short order.
For us, it’s just a super heated surface the re-organizes the molecular pattern on the surface to make the carbon come-up in the stainless steel, creating a black marking in up to 1 000 DPI.
The advantage of this process of any other is immediate, the surface of this bottle opener has no change in surface qualities, it can be left inside or out, hot or cold and short of being belt sanded or sand blasted, the black you see there will stay the same way past the time your mortality kicks in.
The reason why there is so much distance between our fiber laser lens and the material below is to create such a fine point of heat across an uneven surface that the results generated are consistent. Put another way, the larger the focal distance between the lens at the top and the stainless steel bottle opener below, the longer the reverse cone is and the more “within tolerance” space we have.
The black comes about after it has been touched by light. It’s really quite a magical process and completely repeatable, efficient and incredibly precise.
I think it’s especially important to use fiber laser annealing on bottle openers (and machine plates) because it will be exposed to hot, cold, wet, dry and any mixture of sticky substances during its lifetime. Bottles don’t always open perfectly and you need something you can wash without worrying about removing the marking on it.
As our Austrian industrial laser works its way annealing this stainless steel bottle opener, you can already see the clarity and consistency of the permanent marking taking shape. From thick lines to thin ones, logos and images, everything is a really nice shade of black.
After everything is said and done, the stainless steel bottle opener makes for a perfect gift for weddings, corporate events and even personal branding exercises. If it gets dirty, just throw it in the dish washer.
Taking a picture from various angles also helps, you can see the wonderful qualities of this stainless steel bottle opener and CNCROi.com can make just about anything out of this material as well.
I’ve posted many blog articles here about us annealing everything from custom name badges to welding tags… machine plates to even custom stainless steel business cards! Whether you are in manufacturing, aerospace, event planning or even food preparation, permanently annealing stainless steel is a wonderful solution to your branding and safety concerns.
What I always find neat about annealing stainless steel, which you can sort of see in the image below, is that the grain of the steel isn’t affected, much like the wood which we engrave with our CO2 laser tube (in the same machine), you can follow the grain from the annealed to raw.
Depending on the angle as well, you either get a full-on black or a little bit shrouded as this metal has kept at least some reflectivity. That isn’t lost during this process, just dimmed slightly.
There are a whole host of custom stainless steel options at our e-commerce store under the Buy Online heading, check it out, and yes, you can also buy stacks of these custom stainless steel bottle openers as well.
Want some custom annealed stainless steel bottle openers with your very own design? Contact CNCROi.com right now! Don’t worry if you don’t know the first thing about design, we can help you out with that too!
