A Case of Good Engraving

Plastic, pizza and Papa Johns. Here's a brief story about how one laser engraving and polishing company saved its customer time and money with the right engraving strategy.

Steve Finneseth of High Tech Laser & Polishing shared with us the details on the application associated with this photo.

This project involved a molder who was not sure how deep to engrave on the sidewall of the cavity for release purposes, but their customer wanted the engraved logo to be as deep as possible without having any molding issues. 

High Tech engraved the cavity at 0.003 of an inch deep the first time. The after the parts where molded the customer wanted the engraving to be deeper, so we lined up over the existing engraving from the first time and engraved another 0.003 of an inch deep—making the logo 0.006 of an inch total depth into the mold. 

After molding parts the second time the customer was happy and the engraving was releasing fine in the cavity. The remaining production cavities were then engraved 0.006 of an inch deep.  This allowed the customer to save cost by only using one cavity to prototype the engraving depth instead of building two or possibly three different cavities. 

Also, by engraving directly into the cavity the customer saved more because they did not have to program and then profile a graphite electrode, engrave on the graphite electrode, and then burn the electrode into the cavity.