What are the precautions when buying a laser marking machine?
First of all, laser marking machines are industrial products and have not yet entered the category of civilian office supplies. Simply put, 99%+ people buy machines to make money, or to do process research and development, or to transfer outsourced processing to their own companies, or Do processing services.
Corresponding to the above purposes, users of laser marking machines can be divided into three categories:
R&D laboratory, mass production line laser marking machine factory direct sales, processing service factory. Different purposes have different priorities. The main points to pay attention to in the purchase process are as follows:
1. Workpiece: mainly material, surface treatment, together with dyes are the three main influencing factors of laser marking.
Note that laser marking is only one of the processes of workpiece processing. In many cases, pre-polishing, electroplating, and adding photosensitive additives are required; it may also be necessary to perform subsequent processes such as pickling, passivation, and powder spraying after marking. Ideally, a workpiece is directly marked without any follow-up process, and the pre-process does not need to be added additionally, which does not exist in many cases.
Due to the manufacturing cost, industrial lasers have fixed wavelengths and no adjustable wavelengths. There are mainly 1-micron fiber lasers, 10-micron carbon dioxide lasers, and other types of lasers (0.5-micron green light, 0.35-micron ultraviolet, 0.26-micron Deep UV, various ultrafast lasers / picosecond femtosecond attosecond pulse widths).
Very roughly speaking, use 1 micron to mark metal, various plastics; use 10 microns to mark plastic, wood, paper, leather, etc.; if your workpiece has tried the above two and can’t make good results, then Look at other types.
Unless you are doing process research and development, just skip it and choose other types. You should already be familiar with optical fibers and carbon dioxide.
Like other industrial products, manufacturers provide free samples before purchasing, which is actually a standard for acceptance before trading.
If you have a large variety of workpieces, the best strategy is to find a powerful manufacturer, form a strategic partner or pay for outsourcing process research.
2. Budget: The cost of industrial products includes one-time purchase costs, consumables, and maintenance.
The first two items are relatively easy to draw conclusions, through price comparison, calculate the replacement frequency and unit price of consumables.
On this point of maintenance, it is particularly important to point out that it is best to choose a manufacturer that produces its own controller and software. Because many integrators on the market buy components and modules from various upstream suppliers and assemble them into complete machines for sale. This kind of assembly plant without its own electrical and software engineers, if you have a problem, he is mostly shirking the blame, because he can only do simple operation training or replace modules, other technical problems cannot be solved, or he needs to find his supplier Solve problems, drag on for a long time, and delay your production.
3. Machine life
On the basis of the first point, add a little information to make technical and economic decisions.
The theoretical life of the optical fiber is 10 years, and the marking machine uses 20 watts to 100 watts (the new ones are 200 and 300 watts).
Carbon dioxide has a well-sealed model, which can be guaranteed to be used for 10 years or even longer. The old model needs to be refilled after a few years, the glass tube needs to be replaced regularly for the more old-fashioned model, and a chiller should be added for more than 60 watts (the failure rate of water cooling is generally higher). ).
Green UV DPSS lasers are generally only guaranteed for one year, with a theoretical life of more than one year (8 hours/day), and most require water cooling.
The economy of picoseconds in ultrafast lasers has been more and more accepted by the market in recent years. Fiber ultrafast lasers have a long theoretical life, but the single pulse energy is small, and some processes have to be handed over to semiconductor-pumped ultrafast lasers.
To sum up, the precautions can be summed up as the three main points of “clarification of requirements, technical testing, and economic decision-making”, and the three starting points of “workpieces, machines, and funds”.