Thread: laser rotary indexer setup

Quite interesting. About 20 years ago I was running a water cooled 50W (nominal) but measured 69W (actual output) twin beam (2 into 1) Co2 Laser, mainly for rubber stamps (Marking devices to you people in the Americas).

One of the side benefits was the inclusion of a rotary attachment for glass bottles, or in fact anything round. I did find that air assist, which is in fact, compressed air blowing away the dust or whatever is being burnt away from the Laser point source, didn't work as well as passing Co2 instead of compressed air. Ran a small air pump actually, not bottled. By using the C02 on the point I was able to have minimal to almost no burnt material noticeable, thereby getting a far cleaner burn on glass. I eventually discovered that putting Lasered glass through a dishwasher made for a beautiful soft (so to speak) finish. Thoughts?

From memory the C02 was running through the flow meter usually around 9-11 litres a minute for best results on glass. Bit hard to be dead accurate, 10 litres a minute was the aim, but there was a tendency to fluctuate a bit.

Mick.