Low Tide - Resurrected

chongmagic

chongmagic

Well-known member
I found this Low Tide that I had some issues with probably over two years ago. I had just built a few so I figured I would take a look at it. Cleaned up some of the soldering, fixed a lifted pad, popped in a J201 in place to I think was a 2SK30, anyways the J201 brought it to life. I figured I would try something with my laser for the enclosure. I really didn't intend to carve that deep into the aluminum, but Tayda paint is a little more tricky than powder coat. So I kind of used a little too much power. Anyways, it works now and resides in a nice enclosure of its own.

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Looks great 👍
Is that an underwater topographical map?

Can you etch into the actual metal (as opposed to the paint) a significant amount?

I’ve been curious weather a laser could replace chemical etching on bare aluminum.

What I’d read/seen in the past suggested a hobbyist-grade laser could ‘burn’ a permanent mark in aluminum but wouldn’t actually ‘engrave’ an obvious tactile channel like you can get with acid 🤷‍♀️
 
That is so cool! How do you align the laser to the enclosure? Does your laser have an led pilot light for positioning?
 
So these Tayda enclosures don't use powder coat, they use some other type of paint maybe an epoxy. Anyways it is super thick. If it were just powder coat I could just burn it off an reveal the shiny aluminum below. But because this epoxy is so tuff it actually can melt and turn into black, so I just decided to etch it in to really bring out the aluminum.
giovanni said:
That is so cool! How do you align the laser to the enclosure? Does your laser have an led pilot light for positioning?
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I have a fiber laser so it has a framing laser that appears before the burn job in Lightburn. That allows you to center the object you wish to engrave. I set a tool layer in Lightburn that will basically draw a rectangle around the enclosure so I can position it properly.
pricklyrobot said:
Looks great 👍
Is that an underwater topographical map?

Can you etch into the actual metal (as opposed to the paint) a significant amount?

I’ve been curious weather a laser could replace chemical etching on bare aluminum.

What I’d read/seen in the past suggested a hobbyist-grade laser could ‘burn’ a permanent mark in aluminum but wouldn’t actually ‘engrave’ an obvious tactile channel like you can get with acid 🤷‍♀️
Click to expand...
I have a 50w fiber laser, it can etch pretty deep into the aluminum. I would say this etched into the enclosure around .2mm.

Gordo said:
That etch is sick, I love it. Did you backfill with black or is that the laser scorching the paint?
Click to expand...
I didn't use any backfill or black, that Tayda paint is super thick and it can cause everything to look black.
 
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