laser etching ur ds??

[azn_225]

thinking of laser etching my ds but will it ruin it??

 

[FAST6191]

I find laser etching to be a somewhat generic term in many cases (it has been said to mean: evaporation of material (both to leave a mark and remove "dirt"), melting (and reforming) and addition of material/dye just off the top of my head).

This being said a fair few plastics (which courtesy of the hinge thing probably includes the DS, this includes thermoset and thermoplastic types) do not take kindly to being heated like this.

I am not much of a laser engineer (laser welding is about I really did in depth, marking is a whole other thing really and I only really scratched the surface of the area*) but assuming you are going to evaporating material I suggest going to a fast repeated scan/trace to a roughened surface with a properly calibrated laser (power, wavelength and such I would not really feel comfortable suggesting without doing some calculations).

Edit:* I can assure you that was no pun.

 

[azn_225]

thnx for helping me out der fast6191....but i have another question for u, do u think dis place is safe http://www.lasatorium.com ??

 

[FAST6191]

They are in New Mexico (which is going to kill on shipping, I am not sure if you will get stung for sales tax as well: pretty high in that State).

They seem to have done a DS already but I can not find anything on them other than a few linklists on advert sites (not spam in my world but dangerously close).

Lasers are damn expensive so there are only normally two or three places per state/province which people farm stuff out to. I would look at finding somewhere nearer.

 

[striderx]

They are in New Mexico (which is going to kill on shipping, I am not sure if you will get stung for sales tax as well: pretty high in that State).

They seem to have done a DS already but I can not find anything on them other than a few linklists on advert sites (not spam in my world but dangerously close).

Lasers are damn expensive so there are only normally two or three places per state/province which people farm stuff out to. I would look at finding somewhere nearer.

Actually these lasers are comparatively cheap. A plotter-like system to perform laser marking like this can be had for < $8k. Hell, I used to pay more for that to build a gaming PC let alone a revenue generator like this. Universal Laser Systems

Here's an article about some guys doing this with a slightly more expensive rig... http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/..._powerbook.html

And this woman paid for her laptop by selling advertising space on it! http://leahculver.com/laser-etched-laptop/

What they're doing is perfectly safe for the products they advertise. I wouldn't worry a bit about lasermarking a DS. I've been thinking about this myself. But like a tattoo, the hard part is deciding what design to use that you'll have to live with for the rest of your life (okay, the rest of the DS's life!).

JMO...

Go ahead, have fun with it!

strider

 

[FAST6191]

Yeah I imagine marking is a bit easier than cutting/drilling and welding. My bad.

Personally though I would go for something more resembling a traditional tattoo and dissolve some colour in there.

 

[JacobReaper]

im not sure but go for it