Custom Steel Exhaust Tags: Fiber Etched 304SS
These custom steel exhaust tags are fiber laser etched so that they are ultra-durable, the 304 stainless steel emphasizes the point after the client TIG welds this onto their products.
There are many options when it comes to custom steel exhaust tags, from anodized aluminium to titanium, but steel is a good middle-of-the-ground option regarding pricing and durability.
As for the fiber laser etching, CNCROi.com has a variet of ways to handle this as well, we have two fiber lasers in our shop, one gantry based and the other, as you see in this blog post, galvo based.
Regardless of the process, the reason for going with galvo over gantry based fiber laser etching is speed (it’s faster) and the small size of the business card sized (2″ x 3.5″ x .02″).
Unlike the gantry style laser that CNCROi.com uses for larger items that don’t fit in the far smaller production envelope that the galvo offers, there is no big heavy parts that need to move around, it’s just a flickering mirror.
As such, a flickering mirror can move a lot faster than a gantry, there is also less wear and tear on our gantry style laser that also has a CO2 tube in it so it isn’t just metal we can do with it while with the galvo, the fiber is pretty much dedicated to metal.
If you are wondering what anodized aluminium would look like laser engraved at the same size of these stainless steel tags, see the video above.
The reason why I use Lego for my galvo bed is simple, I could spend a lot of time making tons of jigs to do this type of work, or I can just build a jig “on the fly” as the project requires at CNCROi.com.
The vast majority of the projects I do at CNCROi.com using the galvo are not custom steel exhaust tags but industrial part serialization, which are different sizes and shapes but due to NDA, not shown on our website or videos.
When it comes to fiber laser etching, there are a lot of options regarding speed, frequency etc… experience has brought me the best settings for the optimal results for CNCROi.com customers.
For these custom steel exhaust tags, they were all etched the same but if serialization or even bar codes were required, including QR codes, that’s not a problem to etch onto the steel as well.
CNCROi.com can customize the tags you may need however you wish using laser, plasma, waterjet and stamping for larger quantities.
As nothing is added to the stainless steel, there is nothing that will fade, crack or peel over time so what you see is what you’ll get even years down the line.
CNCROi.com also uses our galvo fiber laser to do deep etching because it’s a faster and more optimized tool for doing that type of work were paint or wear and tear will slowly scrape off the surface.
Fiber lasers have a very narrow beam, as a result, even very fine details come out very sharp and the resolution limitation really comes down to the density of the material we are etching being able to support it.
Some of our fiber laser work is larger for more industrial type applications, what we custom make can be used for a wide variety of uses.
Laser engraving custom steel exhaust tags does take some time to do well, there are a lot of options that are possible from frequency to speed of the mirror and even line widths.
Like the first Model-T, you can have any color you want with laser etching stainless steel as long as it’s off-black.
Fiber laser etching can happen on any thickness of stainless steel, these custom steel exhaust tags are 0.02″ thick but we can go as thick or thicker than 0 gauge.
Heat build-up in stainless still does limit our ability to etch thinner gauges because it tends to warp and buckle under the heat generated by the etching process itself.
Plasma is yet another method to custom fabricate custom tags for our customers.
Once the custom steel exhaust tags are etched, they are then cleaned-up because they have a layer of oxidized and etching stainless steel dust on the surface made when CNCROi.com etched them.
After clean-up, you can see how sharp the details were on these custom steel exhaust tags.
It’s very hard to properly photograph or video the etching process and the results because of the how stainless steel reflects the environment its set in, so they never do this justice.
Need custom steel exhaust tags? Contact CNCROi.com right now!