Can You Engrave Stainless Steel With A Co2 Laser

CO2 laser engraving machine, also known as CO2 laser marking machine, is a laser galvanometer marking machine that uses CO2 gas as the working medium. CO2 and other auxiliary gases are filled into the discharge tube and high voltage is applied to the electrode. Glow discharge is generated in the discharge tube, causing the gas to release a laser with a wavelength of 10.64μm. After amplifying the laser energy, it can be scanned by the galvanometer and focused by the F-Theta mirror to mark images, text, numbers, and lines on the workpiece according to the user's requirements.
While stainless steel belongs to metal, conventional solid laser marking machines can mark and engrave on metal, such as fiber laser marking machines and semiconductor laser marking machines. However, CO2 laser marking machines canvnot do this. It can only process non-metallic materials, such as vinyl, paperboard, bamboo, wood, leather, cloth, plastic, etc.
The reason is that the infrared band used by the CO2 laser marking machine has a wavelength of 10.64μm, which is limited to processing soft products and has no effect on metal products. Different wavelengths can also mark different materials:
1. The workpiece material's absorption rate of the laser wavelength: if it is too low, there will not be enough energy to produce photochemical and physical reactions; among the commonly used metal types, except for steel and iron, the absorption rates of other metals are very low;
2. The workpiece material is divided into two parts, one is the substrate, and the other is the surface treatment. For example, if there is plastic spraying on it, CO2 can process it at this time. Since the CO2 laser marking machine only processes the surface of the workpiece, CO2 laser marking machines are widely used in the industries such as the mobile phone shell paint stripping, auto parts paint stripping, PCB board traceability code marking, and etc. .