The difference between laser marking and laser engraving

So what exactly do we mean by laser marking and laser engraving?

LASER MARKING / LASER MARKING
Laser marking is primarily aimed at creating a clearly legible contrast, most often on the surface of the material to be marked. Laser markings are thus relatively smooth, with only minor plasticity at most. Depending on the type of laser application used, this may involve creating thin layers of oxides of different colours, creating contrast using carbon black, or influencing the surface to provide a different light refraction.

LASER ENGRAVING
Laser engraving has the task of creating a plastic relief in the material, usually by evaporating a larger volume of material, which creates areas in the material with a depth of tens of mm or more. Compared to laser marking, engraving is much more time-consuming – a greater number of engraving cycles are required to evaporate a certain amount of material, with each cycle evaporating only a fraction of the desired depth.

It should be noted that to some extent the two applications may overlap slightly. In laser marking, a fraction of the material is always vaporized and engraving can also be used for marking parts, especially in cases where high mechanical resistance of the marking is required. The contrast in this case, however, is rather due to the different lightness on the surface and in the depth of the engraved areas, where the darkness is due to the presence of shadows.