Laser Marking is an advanced Marking technology, which engraves the characters and patterns on the surface of the object by focused laser engraving technology. Compared with traditional printing technology, laser Marking has advantages like higher quality, consistency, abrasion resistance, efficiency, safety, reliability and lower cost , hence is widely used in the PCB industry.

Market Demands with the Development of Technology

With the rapid development of the IT industry, products like smart phones and wearable electronics are in the trend to be thinner and smaller. Meanwhile, consumers hold higher expectation of electronic product. Thus the standard of PCB boards must also be raised. In order to realize the quality control during the production process of the PCB board, it has become the development trend of the industry to mark characters, bar codes, QR codes and other information on the PCB board for tracing.
 
Traditional printing technologies are increasingly unable to adapt to new market technical requirements due to problems such as poor abrasion resistance, low precision, poor aesthetics, and environmental pollution. Therefore, laser Marking has become a trend in the PCB industry.
 

The Defects of Traditional Printing Technology

The silk screen is the traditional way of printing information like pattern, LOGO, contact number, QR code, etc.Under the original market demand, traditional printing technology can be a good choice to meet the market requirements. However, as the improvement of the quality of electronic products and consumers' higher requirements, traditional silk screen cannot meet the needs now. Here its shortcomings are becoming more and more obvious, such as:
 
1. Poor Abrasion Resistance. The abrasion resistance mentioned here refers to the blurring and discoloration of ink, not the abrasion resistance of metal materials.
2. Low Aesthetics. Traditional printing is not suitable and cannot meet the aesthetic needs for some products with high appearance requirements, such as medals, metal business cards, exquisite company publicity nameplates, crafts description nameplates, etc.
3. Environmental Pollution. In the ordinary printing process, organic solvents, heavy metal elements and other chemical raw materials are used. These substances are toxic and will cause personal injury to staffs. In addition, during the drying process of screen printing inks, volatile chemical raw materials will gradually volatilize into the air, which causes environmental pollution.
 

Special Advantages of Laser Marking

The technology of laser Marking successfully solved a series of problems. The characteristics of this technology is high Marking accuracy, fast speed, simple operation and stable performance. The machine is computer-controlled and can print various complex patterns, characters, QR codes and other content, which fully complies with the high-quality Marking requirements of the existing PCB industry.



Compared with traditional printing technology, laser Marking technology has many advantages, such as:
 
1. Higher Quality and Abrasion Resistance. After laser Marking, the surface of the PCB board is clearly enough. Moreover, LOGO, patterns, QR codes, and text are directly carved on the material. Hence the abrasion resistance is higher.
2. Higher Processing Accuracy. The minimum spot diameter of the laser beam can reach 10um (UV laser), which helps a lot during complex graphics processing and other precision processing.
3. Higher Efficiency, Simple Operation and Lower Cost. Users only need to set the parameters on the computer and Marking can be directly done in just a few seconds to a dozen seconds.
4. Non-destructive Marking. The process of laser Marking is non-contacted, there’s no touch between the laser head and the surface of the material. So there is no material damage.
5. Wide Range, Safe and Environmental Friendly. All kinds of thin-metal/non-metal materials can be marked.
6. Stable Performance and Long service Life. With the development of technology, the service life of lasers has greatly increased.
 
In the PCB industry, using the technology of laser Marking QR code can realize tracing of PCB production, processing, and quality. Moreover, it can meet the needs of automated and intelligent management requirements. It has been introduced to PCBWay factory since 2017 , which help with production, quality control, and process improvement.