What is laser engraving and what are the main differences between it and silk screen printing?

Similar to screen printing and silk screen printing, both involve printing characters or patterns on products. However, compared to laser engraving, it has advantages such as fast marking speed, beautiful image marking, high resolution, wear resistance, wide range, high speed and speed, low cost, and strong anti-counterfeiting.

01. Principle

Laser engraving is the process of using the light energy of a laser beam to cause chemical and physical changes in the surface material of a product, resulting in marks. Alternatively, by burning off some of the material with light energy, various patterns, texts, textures, etc. that need to be etched are displayed.

According to different carving methods, it can be divided into lattice carving and vector carving.

02. Classification of laser engraving

According to the carving method, it can be divided into lattice carving and vector cutting.

Dot matrix engraving: Similar to high-definition dot matrix printing; the laser head swings left and right to carve a line composed of a series of points each time, and then the laser head moves up and down simultaneously to carve multiple lines, finally forming a complete image or text.

Vector carving: performed on the outer contour lines of graphics and text, usually using this mode to penetrate and cut materials such as wood, paper, and acrylic. It can also be used for marking operations on various material surfaces.

03. The difference between laser engraving and silk screen printing

The products produced by laser engraving and screen printing processes have similar visual effects on the surface, but there are still significant differences in reality

① Laser carved products have transparent fonts and patterns, while silk screened products are opaque;

② For laser carved products, the color of the font and pattern is the material color, and the background color is the ink color; silk screen products are exactly the opposite of laser carved products;

③ In terms of wear resistance, laser engraving is superior to silk screen printing;

④ The principles used in the two processes are different. Laser engraving uses the principle of optical etching, while screen printing uses the physical principle of allowing ink to adhere to it;

⑤ The price is different, but the level of price is still determined by the difficulty of the font and pattern.