At the current stage of the laser industry, quality UV markers are usually significantly more expensive than fiber-optic orCO2 laser markers.
For production tasks involving simple laser marking of metals, plastics or non-metallic materials, many will find it more sensible and cost effective to purchase the appropriate fiber-optic or CO2 marker.
Read more about choosing a metal laser marker in our article: «Laser Marking Machine for Metal».
Laser UV markers are used for specific applications: most often in the jewellery and microtechnology industries and for processing particularly complex and delicate materials: diamonds and sapphires, optical lens glass, some types of plastic, precious and highly reflective metals – copper, silver, gold.
Let’s look at the basic parameters for selecting a laser marker: emitter, lens, scanner, controller and software.
Emitter for UV laser markers
We supply the Wattsan UV TT marker with a JPT SEAL 355 3, 5 or 10 W emitter. We have chosen these as they are the most reliable and high quality. We can also install more expensive air cooled JPT emitters at the customer’s request.
The JPT emitter allows stable output power to be maintained, has interference protection and a fully sealed, dustproof, moisture-proof and self-cleaning design.
Let’s move on to the main parameters. If necessary, you can compare the following values with other UV laser sources.
The average power can be 3 or 5 watts depending on the emitter model.
The frequency range of 20 to 150 kHz allows marking to be carried out with high speed and efficiency and to be adapted to different materials and applications.
Power stability of the laser system: RMS ≤ 3%, indicating the range of laser power values in the system.
Pulse-to-pulse energy stability shows how precisely the energy of each laser pulse is repeated. This indicator also does not exceed 3%.
Pulse duration <15 ns provides high resolution, minimises thermal effects on the material, allows processing of thin and delicate materials and increases marking accuracy.
The beam quality M² ≤ 1.2 expresses the ability of the laser beam to maintain a Gaussian shape. A value of M² = 1 corresponds to a perfectly Gaussian, theoretically perfect, beam. The closer the M² value is to 1, the closer the beam shape is to the ideal beam shape.
Beam circularity >90%, a high degree of similarity to a perfect circle, ensures a uniform distribution of energy and intensity, which contributes to a consistent and precise result.
Beam diameter (1/e^2): 0.55 ± 0.15 mm. The laser beam diameter measured by the standard (1/e^2) defines the distance from the centre of the laser beam to the point where its intensity decreases by 1/e^2 of the maximum, i.e. by about 13.5%. In other words, it reflects the maximum diameter while maintaining a high radiation power without significant loss.
Do not confuse the laser beam diameter measured at 1/e^2 with the minimum focused beam diameter, which for an ultraviolet laser is theoretically closer to 0.000355 mm, but in practice can range from 0.012 to 0.047 mm, depending on the focal length and other lens characteristics.
Beam Divergence Angle <2 mrad, i.e. approximately 0.114592° at a distance of 1 metre from the source.
