Laser Marking Stainless Steel with Molly Dry and markSolid

This is my approach and a comparison of laser marking Stainless Steel with the popular Molly Dry spray and the specialized marking spray markSolid(TM) 114. For this process I am using an ENDURANCE 10W Solid State Diode Laser.
This is Laser Marking and NOT "Engraving" as a lot of people incorrectly call it.

[@500Driver]

Thank you for doing this...definitely something I look forward to trying.

[@Endurancerobotschannel]

quite impressive, really great test Graham!

[@spro957]

This video is brilliant. Very informative and straight forward. 👍🏽

[@hamrx8]

Thanks, so pleased.

[@ref8893]

Have used markSolid with the E40 NEJE diode laserhead (85% Power 250mm/M 1 pass) on Aluminum ALMG3 (not anodized). It actually works with good results.

[@hamrx8]

That's interesting to know, I tried aluminium some years ago but had no luck with markSolid. Never tried it again, only do anodised aluminium these days.

[@droid0311]

How durable is the marking? Is it permanent? Came out really nice.

[@hamrx8]

Extremely durable, I have been using these knives daily since marking them and there is zero sign of deterioration of the marking.

[@user-hg9si5uu3b]

@hamrx8 Graham, how durable are this results? have you applied an additional coating for protection?

[@grahamham3398]

Extremely durable, I have been using these knives daily since marking them and there is zero sign of deterioration of the marking. It does not require any additional measures for protection.

[@user-hg9si5uu3b]

@@grahamham3398 WOW! Its great news, THANKS!!!!!

[@user-hg9si5uu3b]

@@grahamham3398 do you have parameter "burning time"?

[@grahamham3398]

@@user-hg9si5uu3b I run the laser at full power 800-1000 mm/min. You can go slower that's ok.

[@user-hg9si5uu3b]

@@grahamham3398 I did it with 100% power and burning time 100 ms, using dry moly, but I didnt get result as yours - text doesnt hold( so I decide to use lacquer to save text.

[@pintarmajutradingkualatere6395]

Hi, thanks for sharing this video, just wondering if any other brand of dry moly would work as well??

[@hamrx8]

I have only tested one brand of Dry Moly so can not speak for how any other brands might work. However by far MarkSolid works the best but it is expensive.

[@emmanuelzimba7213]

Is it permanent

[@hamrx8]

Yes it is. I did this to my kitchen knives back in 2019 and even after use almost every day and washing the marking still looks just as good as it was back then.

[@emmanuelzimba7213]

And when you sprayed the dry moly spray how long did you wait to dry ?

[@emmanuelzimba7213]

And when you sprayed mark do you cover it with some tap then engrave

[@hamrx8]

@@emmanuelzimba7213 That depended on the room temperature, perhaps 10+ minutes. You can see its colour change when dry.

[@hamrx8]

@@emmanuelzimba7213 No covering at all. The tape you see in the video is only to mask off the the aria before spraying that was not going to be marked with the laser. Just to make cleaning up easier, no other purpose.