The B+D machine seems the way to go - does anyone have thoughts
concerning this machine vs its competitors ??
At work we just got one of the Baasel lasertech machines. We’ve had
it a week. And I’m in love… Friday I built three rings, completely
from scratch, all in platinum and/or platinum and 18K gold, entirely
without solder. I love this machine. Would also like to know what
the differences are between the various machines. The
sales/demo/setup guy who came out to show us how to use our new toy
implied that the baasel lasertech machine was the pioneer in the
field, and that a certain american made machine had started out with
the company only selling the Baasel machine, and that their current
model is simply a copy, made in Mexico or something, of Baasel’s last
generation machine. Sounds to me like we bought the right one. Or it
sounds like a great sales pitch. I’ve no idea which is true. And I’m
not quite sure that competitors name. Sounded like something with two
initials, but I’d thought one of them was a C, not a B or D. I DO know
that in showing us the various, though minimal, maintenance tasks
that might be required, with the covers off, I have to say this puppy
looks inside like it was built like a fine swiss watch. Beautifully
engineered and assembled. They don’t seem to have missed any bets I
could think of, other than the fact that the place on the case
designed for an argon cylender is shaped for the type of cylander you
can get in germany. Won’t quite fit what we’ll have here, so the gas
tank will have to sit next to the welder, not enclosed in the case’s
holder. No biggie…
I DO have one question, though, for those of you who’ve become
experienced with laser welders. I trying to see various types of
tasks that this machine would do, I took a couple scrapped castings,
18K yellow and 18K white gold, both of which had been rejected because
of severe porosity. Not just isolated pits, but the kind of truly
atrocious sponge gold that just is not normally salveabable. These
were both bad enough that hammering or burnishing the surface with my
normal favorite tool for this, the “bent burr burnisher” tipped with
carbide, had little effect, with the porosity just showing right back
after even minimal polishing. I wondered if I could fix this with the
laser. I know it wouldn’t be a true repair, or deep into the metal,
but I thought I might be able to weld overlapping spots all over the
surface to create a cosmetically acceptable skin. this isn’t what I
experienced, though. Instead, in some places the laser would produce
a good weld, in others it would punch a hole, apparently where the
pits were too extensive, maybe altering the thermal conductivity of
the metal? Anyway, About all I could do was chop up the surface.
Could never quite get it to weld smoothly back to a glased over
surface. Actually, I did manage it, somewhat, on the white gold
piece, by repeatedly overlapping welds and going over and over a small
area till it evened out. Looked like it should have worked. But
after light emery work to level it again, and a little tripoli and
rouge, darn but that porosity was right back there again. Almost as
though the melting metal carried along the little pockets and bubbles
to wherever it then solidified. I’ll note that after all this, I
again went over it with the bent burr, and This time, that worked. so
welding apparently isolated the various holes and pits from each other
enough so that the metal could hold together when being burnished
down. Still, this is not what I’d call a success. And I’m quite new
with the laser. Have any of you had better luck repairing this sort
of really severe spongy porosity? If so, how, and with what sort of
welding paramaters? (voltage, pulse length, focus diameter, etc).
Peter Rowe