Cheap laser etcher for enclosures

[repoman]

Has anyone ever messed around with one of those cheap Chinese laser engravers for enclosure labeling/aesthetics?
Looks like they can't etch metal but they can vaporize paint. Curious if anyones had success in utilizing one.

[Jwar]

Yea there's a few folks who have those here. I can't remember who exactly though....Personally, I wouldn't buy one because of lack of support and the potential for it crapping out earlier than one that's made better. Plus no shielding seems a bit cray cray. I mean, what type of frequencies are those things throwing out for your body to absorb? I don't know. Those are my concerns. I also wonder about the light being too much to look at, but who knows. OH! Also, you need to ventilate when you engrave. Toxic shit being cut into needs to be out of your air space.

If it is a CO2 laser it will carve through paint but will not mark an enclosure without the aid of a product like Cermark. However, there are a TON of cool work arounds that I use.

If it's Fiber, it can engrave into the enclosure but it's not the depth like you'd get on a solid acid etch or CNC machine. You can also anneal, which takes a lot more time, but it will actually burn the image into the enclosure. So it will have the opposite effect and raise up a little bit as opposed to lowering. It's really cool and I miss annealing.

[eatyourguitar]

some examples to look at

https://recoveryeffects.com/

[Jwar]

They use Chinese lasers?