laser engraving touch up gone wrong

[Dolomite_Supafly]

Does not look deep enough.

I have talked to several engravers and most say that if you can catch a fingernail on it then it is deep enough. If you can feel it but it doesn't catch a fingernail then it is not deep enough.

And if spray paint obscures it then it definitely is not deep enough.

[v6pwr]

Definitely not deep enough...it hasn't even made it down to bare aluminium. That is just etching, not engraving. Lasers can be used to engrave, defending on which type that store used on your lower. The strength and rate of burn affects how deep into a certain material a laser can perform. Those standard trophy places normally have the weak lasers that might not be strong enough to engrave into the type of aluminum used. I had mine done with the right laser here in Houston, for $35 each and came out perfect...as deep as other engravings from manufacturer

[golfindia]

Maybe it's just the perspective of the photo, but to me the letters look bigger than they need to be?

To each their own, but I prefer 1/16". Can't be read unless you hold it up to your face, and the wife isn't going to put reading glasses on to tell if you made another SBR....

Hopefully you don't have your stamp back yet. A lttle more risky shipping something around with a serial # that can't be replaced.

[voip-1]

Maybe it's just the perspective of the photo, but to me the letters look bigger than they need to be?

To each their own, but I prefer 1/16". Can't be read unless you hold it up to your face, and the wife isn't going to put reading glasses on to tell if you made another SBR....

Hopefully you don't have your stamp back yet. A lttle more risky shipping something around with a serial # that can't be replaced.

I only submitted the e-form about a week ago. I know they are getting approved quickly but if I shipped it out I should get it back before I received the stamp and paperwork.

Well, this is a drag. More than likely what I have on there is fine, but now that everyone is scaring the hell out of me I will have to consider sending it out for a second engraving. I called Ident and they said that they cannot engrave over what the 1st shop did and they can't engrave on the front or under the trigger guard of a Mega Billet lower, so the only option for me would be to engrave on the right side near the trigger pins, which means I would end up having two engravings on the same side of the receiver.

Bleh.

[bangbangping]

had mine done with the right laser here in Houston, for $35 each and came out perfect...as deep as other engravings from manufacturer

Mind saying where?

[golfindia]

http://www.orion-arms.com/sbr-engraving.html

No affiliation. My last one was there and back in a week and a half. They re-blacken their engraving, so if you had to keep them both it would hardly be noticed.

[v6pwr]

had mine done with the right laser here in Houston, for $35 each and came out perfect...as deep as other engravings from manufacturer

Mind saying where?

yeah, Gerald runs Laser Edge Engraving, located NW Houston, off 249. I paid him cash, so don't know if that mattered about the costs or not. My lowers were the first he tried engraving with laser for SBR purposes. He's done plenty of logo and art etchings on ARs. He had to tinker with the laser's strength and rate on a piece of scrap aluminum to test for depth before trying it on my lower. Now, he know the settings to do engravings without having to tinker
I had it done under by trigger on each side of the slot. It turned out better than expected, the sharp clean edge from laser engraving looks marvelous and also he did it deeper than necessary just to make it obvious that it exceeds specs. He applied oxidizer (similar to what AlumiBlack,etc does) to the bare aluminum engraving also. Too bad I am at work and can't take a pic to post, but he did good. I am planning to make another SBR soon and he's my man to engrave that one.

Tell him Minh sent ya.

[v6pwr]

Maybe it's just the perspective of the photo, but to me the letters look bigger than they need to be?

To each their own, but I prefer 1/16". Can't be read unless you hold it up to your face, and the wife isn't going to put reading glasses on to tell if you made another SBR....

Hopefully you don't have your stamp back yet. A lttle more risky shipping something around with a serial # that can't be replaced.

I only submitted the e-form about a week ago. I know they are getting approved quickly but if I shipped it out I should get it back before I received the stamp and paperwork.

Well, this is a drag. More than likely what I have on there is fine, but now that everyone is scaring the hell out of me I will have to consider sending it out for a second engraving. I called Ident and they said that they cannot engrave over what the 1st shop did and they can't engrave on the front or under the trigger guard of a Mega Billet lower, so the only option for me would be to engrave on the right side near the trigger pins, which means I would end up having two engravings on the same side of the receiver.

Bleh.

Voip, have you considered seeing if the original place can redo it? If they still have the setup on the computer they can try running it through again. It might be the type of laser they have and it might not be strong enough but running multiple passes over it may work. It may take 10 passes, may even take 40 passes...but if they are willing to try on a test piece of aluminum to get it in the ballpark and see if it is deep enough. .003" isn't really that deep, about a couple sheets of paper...

[voip-1]

Maybe it's just the perspective of the photo, but to me the letters look bigger than they need to be?

To each their own, but I prefer 1/16". Can't be read unless you hold it up to your face, and the wife isn't going to put reading glasses on to tell if you made another SBR....

Hopefully you don't have your stamp back yet. A lttle more risky shipping something around with a serial # that can't be replaced.

I only submitted the e-form about a week ago. I know they are getting approved quickly but if I shipped it out I should get it back before I received the stamp and paperwork.

Well, this is a drag. More than likely what I have on there is fine, but now that everyone is scaring the hell out of me I will have to consider sending it out for a second engraving. I called Ident and they said that they cannot engrave over what the 1st shop did and they can't engrave on the front or under the trigger guard of a Mega Billet lower, so the only option for me would be to engrave on the right side near the trigger pins, which means I would end up having two engravings on the same side of the receiver.

Bleh.

Voip, have you considered seeing if the original place can redo it? If they still have the setup on the computer they can try running it through again. It might be the type of laser they have and it might not be strong enough but running multiple passes over it may work. It may take 10 passes, may even take 40 passes...but if they are willing to try on a test piece of aluminum to get it in the ballpark and see if it is deep enough. .003" isn't really that deep, about a couple sheets of paper...

I thought about that but considering they just ran it through one pass and had told me up what they were willing to do I'm not sure it's worth my time to go that route.

They do advertise that they engrave firearms for Trusts, etc, on their website, so one thing I will probably do is get ahold of them to let them know that the engraving they are doing with flatbed CO laser machine is not really meeting the requirements for this type of thing....

Again, this is probably much ado about nothing. I have seen many MANY threads in which people got similar engravings and it is not an issue... including at least a couple that specifically said that ATF looked at similar engraving and said it was fine. Kind of picking nits now. No one wants to go to jail over something like this, but you also have to consider whether the ATF has nothing better to do than harass someone over the quality of the engraving they had done on their form-1 item.

If I do get it re-engraved I will probably just send it out to Ident, but kind of ticked off that I already paid $40 for "engraving" and would have to eat another $60 to send it out of state to get it re-done since no one in Colorado does it any longer for anything approaching a reasonable price.

[voip-1]

It occurs to me that another quicker and basically free option might be to simply get a fine metal dremel tip and go over it myself as basically I have a template from the laser engraving.