Steel Pan Branding: CNC Fiber Laser Etching

Steel pan branding has actually a lot in common with some of the industrial parts CNCROi.com fiber etches or anneals with serialization and corporate logos, but as we can’t show that work being performed, a pan was used as a substitute.

A pan has a deep area that needed fiber laser etching, it’s similar to some parts where we have elevated edges or corners or other obstructions that would traditionally cause a lot of trouble when it comes to adding serial numbers or other information on metal parts for traceability purposes.

Whether the end metal is stainless steel, anodized aluminium or any mix of alloys and composites, the same challenges with weird and wonderful parts exist in that they need a custom jig for proper support.

Most of the stainless steel CNCROi.com marks permanently is 304 but the results are the same within 316 and other variants.

Using a proper custom jig (not used in this video or photos for speed), is really a game changer for keeping parts flat and in the right place, when CNCROi.com serializes parts, the customer wants them to be at the same spot every time, no way to do that without a proper tested jig.

There is also a bit of calibration required when it comes to dialing the settings, too much power the part may warp under the intense heat of the beam, too little and nothing might occur or worse, using the wrong beam time.

CNCROi.com has both a CO2 tube in our laser and a fiber, some metal alloys produce a better marking with one over the other, this is why when it comes to part marking, whether it’s this simple stainless steel pan branding or some exotic metal composite, having options has saved our customers many times as we can optimize beams for particular substances.

A great example would be plastics, sometimes our CO2 laser source produces a wonderful result, sometimes not so good, sometimes our fiber laser is in the same boat, but having both options allows us the flexibility to produce optimal marking on pretty much anything.

Because we have two laser sources, CNCROi.com can use both on a single part, so if you have a mix of materials, we can etch, anneal or brand them even if they require very different beams and processes.

For this stainless steel pan branding, we used our fiber laser source, CNCROi.com has worked with a lot of stainless steel so the settings were pretty straight forward for this one, except for the jig part which revealed itself as a necessity on the underside of the steel pan.

When it comes to other materials we process, anodized aluminium is another one that we work a lot with, it has the advantage of being colorful but the result is always an off-white.

If the pan was just slightly higher along the edges, the branding we performed would have to be smaller so as the head didn’t hit the sides of it, a little lower, and we could have fiber etched a larger surface area, the potential for error is always there so testing is vital!

As this was a one-off demonstration, I just stuck the pan in the machine and went away with the fiber etching of the stainless steel pan branding, hence no proper jig to make sure position was perfect (was done by eye).

For the bottom part of the stainless steel pan branding, the results were fantastic, the etching was consistent across the entire area, it was nice and dark with the bonus of being clearly legible!

When it comes to custom branding across a variety of materials, practical uses of it would be to prevent theft and to make sure tools and parts are in the right area and easily identified.

I really love my CNC laser, awesome repeatability and fantastic results for military, aerospace and custom whatevers our clients in other industries come-up with.

The bottom of the stainless steel pan branding though, that was another story, due to the elevated arm, I had to raise the pan and thus, it was slightly out of kilter during the fiber laser etching process.

You can see some of that happening along the left of the pan where it was slightly in a different focal range than the right of the pan, producing something more tantamount to fiber laser annealing vs true etching.

If you are wondering what the difference is between annealing and etching, watch this video explainer.

This is really where a proper jig would have to be made to account for a totally parallel stainless steel pan branding, but as this was a demonstration, I didn’t bother as it’s a learning lesson for all involved.

The results still look fantastic, but not as good as the base of the stainless steel pan, for two reasons, first is the surface area of the pan itself, the inside is very nicely polished and smooth while the underside had some inflection and grooved points to help with better heat distribution.

CNCROi.com can’t just etch your metal parts, we can also produce flat parts that we then etch on your behalf.

If this was a part that we had to fiber laser etch in quantity, making a proper jig would have solved some of these issues and further optimization (we only had one pan for the demo) would have probably solve the rest of them to produce a nicer result when it came to fiber laser etching the stainless steel pan branding.

Truth be told though, it’s actually quite rare where CNCROi.com has to etch (fiber or CO2) a surface with branding this large, most industrial parts are rather small and the serialization and tracking information is just as small.

Taking a look at the result though, they are totally food save, stainless steel is a wonderful material, we could use this to cook an egg no problem as no chemicals were added to the pan for this process to occur.

If you are wondering what CNCROi.com can do with custom metal artwork, check this video out.

The stainless steel is nice and shiny and the fiber laser hitting the pan is also very bright and all the reflections does cause issues in production when it comes to filming, so that’s why these photos and video don’t come out fantastic as the results we achieved, cameras don’t light flashes of light.

Looking at the bottom of the stainless steel pan branding, you can see a slight variation in the results left to right, again, not having a jig and as a result, the surface being at a slightly different angle of focus caused this.

Regardless of your metal type, CNCROi.com probably has experience etching or annealing it, if you need something custom PERMANENTLY marked, without having to use screen printing, vinyl stickers or the like, that’s what we specialize in.

Any questions, just contact us right away, and send us your spec drawings as well as quantity.