Hi All,
A co-worker asked me if I could make a little brass nameplate for his son. Like one of those trophy nameplates. I have the 10w laser. Any suggestions of material, power, and speed?
Thanks.
John
While you might be able to use something like cermark or dry moly marking spray. The blue diode wavelength isn’t absorbed by metals. You’ll need an IR laser like XTool has, though snapmaker has one planned in the near future.
The articles I pulled for those 2 compounds state that they are for use with a CO2 laser. So, I’m thinking it’s not possible with the Snapmaker laser.
You could use the CNC module and an engraving bit.
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Is he absolutely fixed on it being brass? Have you considered one of the two color laserable acrylic sort of materials? I think some of them do have a faux brushed metal outer surface with black exposed by the lasering.
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That’s what I would do. Even with an IR laser, you’re going to have marking not etching, and it just wouldn’t look all that nice - you would need to use a fiber laser to actually engrave. Should be a piece of cake with a CNC engraver.
You can also try Protopasta’s brass-filled PLA if it just has to look like brass. I’ve been using their bronze one and it is … interesting. Much heavier than PLA, and polishes up real nice. Nobody would mistake it for the real metal, though.
Don’t discount the IR. 
I have the XTool one and to my surprise instead of just marking these metal plates I got, it ripped and vaporized the metal plating right off to expose the other metal underneath. (I’m assuming zinc plated brass). It’s also got some depth to it, I’ve also cut halfway through an aluminum business card with it (I was able to flex it and break it at the laser lines, similar to popping open a soda can).
EDIT: Note; this was done at 6000mm/min @ 90% power, 0.05 interval with the 2W IR, took about 5 minutes.
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I’ve burned through plating too using the 2W IR, and depending on the plating it can have some depth. Haven’t had it do more than mark copper alloys from the scrap bin or anything with chromium in it, no matter what % power or depth I use.
@nweolu I like that bit. $40 is more than I want to spend on a friend’s project. I am going to save the link though. Never know when it might come in useful.
@rtrski 2-layer plastic is great. I’ve used the black on white for several projects. The fact that you can backlight the white makes it extremely useful for flight simulator controllers. I didn’t know they had gold over black though; I’m going to look into that.
@Skreelink That looks light it might just fit the bill for this project. Do you have a link for it? Was there any prep work or did you just turn it on and burn?
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If you don’t want to spend $40 on a friend’s project, you definitely don’t want to buy a whole new machine + new module. 
I was just making conversation about the IR laser. Hopefully snapmaker releases their own soon, it’s been fun on my XTool.
Oops. I thought you were talking about the 10w laser on the Snapmaker. An IR laser for the Snapmaker would be cool but they are starting to price themselves out of my wallet with the add-ons they already have.
Ooo… Did you say flight sim??
I had a 3rd party metal engrave and ink my buttonbox/powerpanel vs backlighting. But here’s a relatively recent pic of the spacesim Caddy seat.
Total off topic, sorry. But couldn’t resist crossing the hobby streams. 
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Oh lawdy, I hope the snapmaker IR laser is as good as the XTool’s. You guys are gonna have a BLAST playing with it. It worked on clear acrylic, actually turning it black instead of white etching, oddly. Then I decided to mess with the focus, and I engraved the center of 1/2" clear acrylic.
XTool D1 with 2W IR - 6000mm/min, 0.1mm interval, 100% power, focus 0.25" from the top.
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Now that is cool stuff
That’s pretty neat; I hadn’t thought of focusing in the center of the acrylic.
I did some pretty straightforward labelling of clear toolhandles (socket drivers mainly) but haven’t tried out any acrylic sheet yet. Got a list of measuring/layout tools to make when I get the time.
That is pretty freaking cool. I thought it will make the bubbles like in those 3d images in acrylic blocks. This is better
That’s my next test, gonna try breaking up an image into layers and making me focus blocks, and try doing different parts as different layers to give the image a stereoscopic 3D look. It’d be easier on the Snapmaker with actual Z control, but alas, I can’t afford the snapmaker ecosystem anymore. 
So unless I come up with new things on the 2.0 with up to the 10W laser, my guide days are over.
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I found kiri:moto slicer helpful for layering out models. Maybe it could help you out.
Would be nice to 3d engrave inside a block with rotary module.
Nice engravings 
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