Jewelers Benchpin Forums

The sterling silver bracelet plates I used with the following settings are 1.2 - 1.25 mm thick. As in, one plate had variances in thickness of five-hundredths of a millimeter.

If the bracelet plates are not already flat, be sure to flatten them before engraving. If you are going to engrave them while they are rounded, I will leave you to do the maths on that. Sterling silver plates of this thickness are easily flattened and reshaped either by hand or especially with the proper tools.

I used watch cleaning putty to secure the bracelet plates to the table. FWIW, I only had to adjust the laser focal height to between 2mm and 3mm, depending on how thick I had the putty. I am not sure it matters, but I just put two tiny pieces of putty on the ends of the bracelet plate which left an air gap underneath the majority of the plate. Also, using this putty, it allowed me to use the Framing tool to easily adjust the position of the plates to be centered with where the framing rectangle was showing.

For text, I like the following settings:

• Font of Choice (ex.: Dancing Script, Regular, 8.2pt)
• Engrave
• Fiber IR
• 70% Power
• 2,000 mm/s
• 10 passes
• 300 lines per cm
• Bi-Directional
• 30 kHz
• Incremental @ 45 degrees

For B&W or technically just a Black image on a transparent background, when trying to match text, I like the following settings:

• Single-color (black) image (ex.: a heart outline image with a height of 3.16mm and width of 2.28mm)
• Engrave
• Fiber IR
• 350 microns per second duration
• 70% Power
• 1,000 dpi
• 7 passes
• Atkinson bitmap mode
• Bi-Directional
• 30 kHz

I like the 10 passes because it helps give depth. Having first learned engraving with machines I am used to pressing the graver into the metal and producing a gouge or visible and tangible valley into the metal. Having grown up in the jewelry business I have seen engravings from decades past and noted their wear in different metals and positions in jewelry. Now I have an expectation of longevity. This is even more true since I have seen laser engravings not last a year in some metals and pieces of jewelry because there was no real depth to the engraving, if it could even be called such. So, 10 passes for depth.

I like the 2,000 mm/s because it cuts into the metal without allowing debris and other issue raise the metal. If we allow the laser to linger too long it causes overheating and tends to end up with a raised "boiled" surface which is not good.

300 lines per centimeter because we want as high of quality as we can get.

Incremental @ 45 degrees because it acts like a clean-up layer and provides a better polish to the engraved surface. I did numerous tests with this, at different settings and this yielded some of the best results.

As with most laser engraving jobs on silver, after the item has been engraved it should be hand polished with an appropriate polishing cloth.

Before you use this for any type of production you should test your environment, machine, and specific metals you will be engraving.