With YouTube reviewer discount codes, you can lower the price even further. They seem to allow multiple discounts at once.
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Here are some quick test markings with the settings I got from the PLA-CF tests.
Sorry, don’t have any blue PETG but I think I have a good range of colors here.
With the exception of the TPU swatch, all the others are the same settings.
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That is very good. Then again if I spent $3999 (£3,185) on a laser I would expect it to engrave plastic.
I was hoping that one of the lasers for around £1500 would do it.
Also from what I have watched on YouTube it looks like Fiber Lasers are best at this, and even then putting text onto certain colours of a 3d part can have bad results, blue being one of them colours.
It’s not really about the plastic so much as the color. As I’ve researched this, folks with lasers other than UV have had issues because the laser won’t even react because the surface color is too close to the wavelength of the laser itself.
The blue lasers don’t work well with blues, IRs with reds. And whites were also problematic depending on the spectrum.
And I have to say, the much finer beam size, compared to fiber or diode, is quite nice as my scale is on the smaller side.
As I’m a 3D printer first and (probably not even) an engraver second, the UV seemed to be the only choice as I deal with all the colors of the rainbow.
Yes, right now, the initial outlay is a little steep by comparison to the other laser types but I think I’ll be able to make up that difference quickly enough with some traditional engraving on the side.
And the learning curve of the UV is bit steep.
I don’t think I’ve cracked it quite yet but I’ve gotten to a zone where I can mark all my currently used filaments and colors without melting. And now it’s just further refinement of settings.
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Hey @cooltoff - just curious about a possibility. Can the laser do sintering?
What I’m wondering is if on a flat surface you could lay down a very thin uniform layer of “dust” from fine ground anything and then run the laser to fuse a sparkly layer of copper, silver, or even gold into the model?
Those are all very reflective so would dazzle the room and nobody should be in there without safety glasses. But if not metals, maybe other materials?
MZip, I am the farthest (furthest?) from a laser expert that you can get.
My only expertise at this point is 5W UV laser on 3D printing filaments. 
Sorry, I can’t help on this one.
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Well, the results look great! How long do those logos take to print? From the video at their site maybe not long?
I bet there can be cool enhancements, though. Maybe if enough light gets through the “dust” layer to melt the plastic, you can just press down or even spread the dust after the print and press down. The laser can probably do all sorts of fun stuff since it draws like that.
They took maybe 20 seconds.
But that was after a good month of trial and error and head scratching about what parameter did what and how to adjust it.
There is very little good, understandable info on how the UV laser operates. And there is also apparently differences between using EzCad and Lightburn, which is what I use because I’m Mac.
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Cool and thank you!
I was looking at the specs and that’s a class IV laser. Please be careful. It sounds like you might be new to laser safety but those will also engrave retinas even with reflections from the workpiece. They are very dangerous to anyone not wearing the safety goggles.
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New to lasers but not new to safety in a shop environment. As with all types of shop tools, a healthy respect keeps the eyes as well as the digits intact.
Aside from the included, very well made safety glasses, I also purchased the safety shield.
The 3D printers and now the UV laser engraver, are just the newest tools I’ve used in a lifetime of making.
I thank you for the warning nonetheless.
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I’m glad you were already aware and prepared and didn’t mind me sticking my nose in.
I worked at a place where workers were careless with a class IV laser and put a nice reflected splash on a wall outside the room they were working because they hadn’t interlocked the door. Had anyone been in that line they could have had major eye damage. Our shop manager wanted to beat the living “heck” out of the guys.
Apparently it’s pretty nasty if you catch a reflection or beam in the eye. You hear a tiny pop or popping and then your vision starts turning red around the parts where there is no image any more. Pulsed is much more dangerous than CW at equivalent power since the shock waves detach the retina too.
I realized that I had the old “swatchbook” from when I got the A1-Mini when it was first released.
Here are the blues for you @Spoon and then just all the PETG’s and ABSs that were included in that swatchbook.
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That looks awesome! Thank you for posting and sharing your success!
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Are you able to share your Results?
Interesting idea. Makes me wonder if Cermark or CRC Dry Moly would work for this application… They work well on metal and it’s all about fusing the material to the surface which ‘should’ be easier with printed plastic…
I’ll have to try that.
White acrylic paint might also work. In both cases it would need to be a smooth enough surface to wash off the unexposed material cleanly.
Do you mean my settings? Sure.
Speed - 6000
Line Interval - .03
Q-Pulse - 1
Frequency - 40
Image Mode - Jarvis (for the Logo part)
This is just the starting point of where I got good results across all the different filaments and colors. Some individual tweaking achieved better results on certain combos of color/filament type.
Really still trying to feel my way around these parameters.
Been mostly adjusting the speed.
For the 3D plastics, 40 is frequency to use.
Q-Pulse is still cloudy for me. The above settings with a Q-Pulse of 25 achieved very similar results. I gather there is a kind of bell curve to Q-Pulse where the energy efficiency, shall we say, goes up and down. so, probably 1 and 25 are on the low ends of that bell.
I had found that the range on Q-Pulse for my samples was very short. Visible differences at just 1ns steps.
Which was very different from the settings I took from what some reviewers were using for acrylics and the like.
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