Since the “hot-rod” days of the early fifties, automotive designers and individuals have used custom wheels to personalize the “look” of their cars and the aftermarket wheel industry ramped up to feed this demand. During the past several years, the custom wheel industry has experienced unprecedented growth due partly to advances in CNC machining, which led a custom wheel manufacturer to test the feasibility of marking their powder-coated and clear-coated aluminum wheels.

An FH Series marking head, in conjunction with a Firestar t-Series laser and WinMark Pro laser marking software, provided beam delivery and power control for this test. The FH head was equipped with a 125 mm HP (high-power) lens that provided a 180-micron (0.007”) focused spot with a 3 mm (0.118”) depth of focus.

In WinMark Pro’s Drawing Editor, we created our fictitious West Coast Wheels logo using a TrueType® font with a Text Height of 4.76 mm (0.1875”). To format the “Wheels” text, we modified Text Width and Extra Character Spacing properties from their default settings. The text denoting wheel size (22 x 9) was marked using “European”, one of WinMark Pro’s 12 built-in stroke fonts.

On the occasion of the 200th issue of our SYNRAD Applications Newsletter, we decided to highlight an application from our very first newsletter. Now almost ten years old, this application is a reminder that although we see new products and materials in our Lab daily, sealed CO2 lasers are still the best tools for processing the primary materials—glass, plastics, metals, ceramics, and composites—used in industrial and medical manufacturing today.

This application trial involved cutting 25.4 mm (1.0”) thick foam to the exact shape needed to secure hand tools inside a tool case. This same foam technology is used to package many types of products, ranging from delicate electronic devices to camera gear to precision tools in cases lined with these foam panels.