The Canadian company Laserax Inc (www.laserax.com) launched a patent-pending shotblast-resistant laser marking process at the recent 2018 Die Casting Congress & Exposition in Indianapolis.

For the past three years, Laserax has been working to provide die-casters with foolproof traceability systemsthat can mark ‘permanent identifiers’ directly on castings.

The company achieved this with the help of its development partners — Cascade Die Casting Group and Mercury Marine — and it is now possible to identify parts right out of the die with tracking codes that will resist any post-process treatments, including shotblasting.

Mark Petro, director of engineering at Cascade Die Casting Group, said: “Ever-increasing requirements by automotive manufacturers are pushing die-casters towards a perfect traceability system, from the extraction of the casting from the die through to any post-process treatment and all the way to automotive assembly lines.

“Our challenge was to find a partner that we could work with to achieve this — hence our association with Laserax.”

Alex Fraser, CTO of Laserax, said: “Maintaining the legibility of a part identifier through shotblasting was no small feat; it involved testing several parameters. Many iterations were required, and many hypotheses were formulated — and rejected because of the test results.

However, our commitment, expertise and creativity prevailed in the end.

“The laser system components for shotblast-resistant marking will depend on our clients’ needs, but they will usually include a safety enclosure, the laser, an HMI (human-machine interface) and an in-house designed vortex system.”