Lasers make a mark on Ti bikes
The YAG laser produces a smooth, black shiny annealed graphic which won’t degrade or wear off
ES Technology gives high tech titanium bike frames the finishing touch by using YAG laser engraving to produce high quality graphics.
Although it is more usually associated with aerospace applications, Sabbath uses titanium to make high technology racing bikes that are light, stiff and strong.
Titanium doesn’t rust or degrade, and its dynamic properties allow a frame to be designed which is at once stiff (so efficient at coupling rider effort into road speed) and yet comfortable, even over the longest rides. From the point of view of the rider, a titanium frame should last a lifetime – other components will need replacing as they wear out but, unlike carbon fibre or steel, titanium won’t deteriorate.
So, given a frame that lasts, it is no surprise that most titanium frames are not painted or coated in any way. Sabbath offers its bikes in a range of finishes; from natural to brushed or polished.
Greg Roche, founder of Sabbath, looked to find an equally high-tech method to mark his titanium frames. Seeking a mark which looked special and was permanent, he approached ES Technology, a laser marking specialist. “ES has many different laser types that it uses to mark parts for people, they can choose from fibre, Nd:YAG or CO2; they soon found the best laser for the finish we wanted” commented Greg.
A multimode Q-switched YAG laser is used to mark the titanium frames. The result is a smooth, black shiny annealed graphic which won’t degrade or wear off. ES turns around batches of various frame types dispatched by Sabbath to its jobshop.
Greg Roche added: “The other advantage of ES’s service is that they build custom machines, so they have a full machine shop which means that they can create dedicated fixtures to present the parts to the laser for marking. A bike frame isn’t the easiest part to manipulate without such a fixture to ensure positional repeatability.”
ES Technology is based near Oxford and builds special purpose industrial laser systems as well as operating a laser marking service for decorative, functional and identification marks on metals, plastics and ceramics.
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