What kind of engraving laser should I choose?

[hope]

Hello, I am here to asking about the engraving laser. These days my boss who does B2B business and wants to do B2C now. We sell hollow accessories such as hair accessories and lamps, but now we want to try to design our own patterns and make them into finished products. Most of our raw materials are metal steel plates between 0.5mm and 1mm. Recently they also recommended a brand like me, Omtech laser, but there are so many choices, should I choose a high-power engraving laser?

[JamesST]

Ok, mine field alert......

C02 will engrave steel with a black mark using and additive

Fibre will engrave steel direct

Basically you get what you pay for. Top end are top end for a reason, and the same with cheap chinese lasers.

You can get good results on both, but there are more factors such as speed, quality, after sales service etc,,

[tagmakers]

Depends what you need to engrave. In general CO2 lasers are no good for metal - the only exception being good anodised aluminium. The emulsion that's sprayed onto metal to enable CO2 marking soon wears off, leaving you with unhappy customers. And it's a laborious, costly and messy process. A good FIBRE LASER will set you back £30k to £60k (or more), so it needs to earn its living. But the market for engraved materials is HUGE, and if you can do bulk-engraving (eg: 500 tags with serial numbers), you can attract business from practically every company you can think of. Most of our work is for bulk engraving, and we now have nearly 2000 customers in 22 countries around the world- including some of the world's largest and most notable organisations.

Like everything, cheap is usually nasty. While some of the machines coming out of China are reasonable, the issue is parts and service. If there is no local (UK) support, avoid buying the machine.