The high carbon steel darkened very easily using the 20-watt q-switched ytterbium fiber laser. The parts were marked using a 160 mm focal length lens. The short focal length lens produced a smaller marking area in regard to marking on the rounded portions of the part, due to the short depth of focus. To compensate for the distortion caused by marking on the rounded portions while out of focus, as seen on the second line of text on some of the previously marked samples, the text was slightly modified with the laser marking software. Modifying the text produced a mark that looked to be all marked in focus. The cycle time for the mark was 13.53 seconds. This time includes 2 passes for the logo and 7 passes on the text, multiple passes were used to produce a higher amount of contrast.
