Engraving Equipment
Engraving is the process of incising a design onto a hard surface by cutting grooves into it. Traditionally, engraving equipment used a steel tool called a burin to create engravings. Today, most engraving, especially for industrial applications, is done with machine-controlled lasers. Laser engraving is a clean and permanent process that doesn't damage the product being engraved. It also doesn't produce any by-products.
Laser engraving equipment consist of three parts: a laser, a controller, and a surface. The laser acts like a pencil, tracing designs on a surface. The controller, generally a computer, controls the laser's direction, intensity, speed, and width. The surface is the material that the laser acts on, the engraver's canvas. The most common type of laser engraving equipment is the X-Y table, where the workpiece is stationary and the laser moves in X and Y directions, creating vectors.
Another type of laser engraving equipment is for cylindrical pieces, or pieces mounted around a cylinder. In this type of engraving, the laser traverses a fine helix and on/off pulsing creates the image on a raster basis.