Laser Marking an Electrical Panel
Having a massive bed on our laser allows us to do some pretty incredible objects that you wouldn’t normally associate with our line of business – such as full electrical panels! In this case, I was thinking of an innovative business card I could give to a large electrical services company in the Niagara Region so I laser marked an old electrical panel with my CNCROi.com business card.
As always, the pictures just don’t seem to do the fiber marking justice, the color is consistent and solid – not faded as you see below. The entire process was relatively fast and after a little material testing I was happy with the results we could achieve.
From a closer angle, you can see how fantastic our Trotec Speedy 400 flexx really performed on this task. I had the choice of either our fiber laser or CO2 but in this case, I wanted to just change the surface properties of the material, not remove the protective powder coating finish it had. This panel by the way is more than 50 years old!
What’s really cool about laser marking is that the results are permanent but unlike laser engraving, very little smoke is produced. That’s an important consideration as who knows what people put in electrical panel paint 50 years ago… not something I wanted to take any chances on so the extraction was on full (back of machine and on vacuum table) as was our gas assist flushing the optics and work piece with compressed air.
Looking at this project from another angle during production, you can see how fast the laser is moving on this job – that is a point of red light that even the camera had a tough time keeping track of. Having one of the fastest machines on the planet really makes quick work of what would normally be a very tedious project.
The results were fantastic as usual – I have yet to find a material we can’t do something with here at CNCROi.com HQ. Watch the video yourself and be sure to contact us for any of your laser marking, etching, engraving, cutting or design requirements.
