Marking/Etch

Laser marking is a process of creating surface contrast using a range of physical effects, whereas laser etch creates surface contrast by removing certain (typically .005 to .02") depth of material.
Physical effects, enabling laser marking, include:
Surface oxidation at laser induced elevated temperatures (marking stainless steel, titanium, wood, and most plastics.)
Ablation of low thermally conductive coating on substrate with high thermal conductivity (marking anodized aluminum, silicon nitride)
Thermally induces surface cracks (marking glass)
Change of surface roughness after local melting and re-solidification ( marking Al2O3/SiN ceramics, silicon, gold, platinum, some plastics)
Deposition of target material on a marking material (marking quartz wafer using ceramic target and inverted material transfer)
 Applications:
LLTI can mark any shape or illustration, identification, and a variety of Automatic ID codes, including but not limited to Data Matrix, Dot Matrix, Code 3 of 9, Interleaved 2 of 5 and many others.
 Materials:
LLTI specializes in marking anodized aluminum, stainless steel, titanium, gold, silver, nickel, silicon, wood, glass, acrylic, delrin, and a variety of polymers.
 Capabilities:
With an unlimited font selection, LLTI has capabilities of marking alphanumeric characters as small as 20-micron height with smallest stroke width from 6 microns and etch down to 0.1" deep.