Desktop Hybrid Fiber Laser Marking System
When a contract shop is scrapping a quarter of a production run and taking more than five minutes to mark a single part, the customer on the other end of that order starts shopping for a second source. Laser Industries, a job shop in Orange County, California, hit that wall with an aging YAG marker on a job for its largest marking customer. Replacing it with a Jimani fiber laser marking system dropped the cycle time on that part from six minutes and 39 seconds to 42 seconds and marked cleanly through the thickest plating the YAG could not handle. Here is what changed, why the fiber system did what the YAG could not, and what a job shop owner should weigh before making the same swap.
Why was a YAG laser marker creating a production bottleneck?
Quick Answer:
An aging YAG marker became a bottleneck because it took more than five minutes to mark each part, could not mark through the thicker plating on the job, and scrapped roughly a quarter of the run. Running two shifts, Laser Industries could clear only about 150 parts a day — well short of what their largest customer needed.
The job in question belonged to Laser Industries' biggest marking customer, and that customer was threatening to cancel the order or move it to a second source. For a contract shop, losing an anchor account is not a line-item problem. It reshapes the year. The marking itself was the constraint: a YAG that needed more than five minutes per part, combined with a 25% scrap rate on the thicker-plated parts, capped daily output at around 150 pieces even with two shifts on the machine.
Throughput math like that is the kind of pressure we live with on our own floor. Jimani has run a laser marking job shop since 1990, so a customer describing a scrap rate and a cycle time is describing a problem we recognize immediately, not one we have only read about.
How much can a fiber laser cut cycle time versus a YAG marker?
Quick Answer:
In this case, moving the job from the YAG to a fiber laser cut the cycle time on the problem part from six minutes and 39 seconds to 42 seconds. A second job dropped from three minutes and 52 seconds to 28 seconds. The gains came from higher beam quality and stable output power, not from running the laser harder.
Those are not Jimani's numbers. They are Laser Industries' own measurements, recorded during a working session and documented afterward in the letter from VP of Operations Joseph Butterly reproduced below. The order had a long lead time on the 50-watt laser module, so the urgency was real enough that we asked the customer to meet us at the shop on a Sunday.
The cycle-time drop came from how a fiber laser delivers energy. A fiber source focuses to a smaller spot with higher power density and holds that output steady, so a complete mark is made in fewer passes and at higher marking speeds. The work that day was not magic — it was dialing in the relationship between speed, power, and pulse frequency for each part, then saving that recipe in the marking software so it runs the same way every time the part comes back.
Why does a fiber laser mark through plating a YAG marker cannot?
Quick Answer:
A fiber laser focuses to a smaller spot with higher power density and holds stable output across its life, so it can ablate through thicker plating that an older, power-degraded YAG marker leaves incompletely marked. Both lasers operate near 1.06 microns, so the deciding difference is beam quality and deliverable power density at the focal point — not wavelength.
This was the failure that drove the scrap rate. The YAG could not reliably mark through the heavier plating on a portion of the parts, and those parts came off the machine as rejects. A fiber laser on the same job ablated through even the thickest plating on Laser Industries' parts.
It helps to be specific about the mechanism rather than waving at "fiber is better." A YAG laser's output tends to fall off as its flashlamps and laser rod age, and an older machine that once had margin can lose the power density needed to punch through a thick coating. A fiber laser module is sealed and air-cooled and runs for tens of thousands of hours without that power degradation. The comparison here is against one shop's specific, aging YAG — not a blanket claim about every YAG ever built — but the underlying reasons it held up are the same reasons we build on fiber.
Why would a job shop buy a fiber laser from a direct competitor?
Quick Answer:
Laser Industries buys from Jimani — a direct job shop competitor — because Jimani lets buyers test equipment on their own parts before purchasing and stays available afterward. For a capital purchase, the deciding factor is rarely price alone. It is confidence that the system will run and that help is a phone call away.
Laser Industries is a marking job shop in the same Southern California market Jimani serves. They had purchased cutting lasers, water jets, and laser markers over the years, and the marking equipment came from Jimani every time. When the urgent fiber job came up, Jimani opened the shop on a Sunday so the customer could program and run his actual parts on the equipment, then sent him home that evening with a 20-watt fiber system to bridge the long lead time on his 50-watt module, with an agreement to swap the lasers once the larger unit arrived.
After that visit, Joseph Butterly, VP of Operations at Laser Industries, put it in writing:
Dear Jim,
For the past nine years I have been the owner of my own marking business. Over the years both to stay current with the latest technology and to be as efficient as possible, I have purchased a wide variety of equipment including cutting lasers, water jets and laser markers. Each time I have purchased equipment for the marking division, I have gone to Jimani Inc. Jim Earman, owner of Jimani Inc., has been both an educator and friend for each one of my purchases all the while remaining a competitor. This takes on much more significance as Jim is in the same line of work as I am.
With each purchase, Jim has made his entire shop available to me to come in and test the equipment I was looking to purchase. The experience I had with my most recent purchase, a fiber laser, was no different. Once again Jim opened his shop to me but this time on a Sunday. I arrived with some jobs to program and run on the new equipment. Together we went through a series of jobs and from that I was able to better my production rates.
Prior to my visit to Jimani my cycle time on parts I was running on my current system was six minutes and 39 seconds. After we made some adjustments my new cycle time was 42 seconds. My second job my cycle time was three minutes and 52 seconds. With Jim's help and the new system running the parts we were able to get the time to 28 seconds.
I look for stability, support, and maintenance when making a capital investment and those can found at Jimani. Jimani not only sells the product they use they also use the products they sell which eliminates the worry from the sale. I have never once asked myself if I was doing the right thing when making a purchase from Jimani, I knew I was before I even bought it.
In the highly competitive market of today, where every penny and every second counts, staying current could be the difference in winning and losing the jobs you are quoting on.
As an owner of my company I know that being able to produce more parts at lower cost is essential. Furthermore, being able to see a return on my investment within the first year or two allows me to grow my business.
I look to continue my partnership with Jimani by purchasing additional equipment in the not too distant future.
Best regards,
Joseph Butterly — VP Operations, Laser Industries
The detail worth noting is that none of this hinged on Jimani being the cheapest option. It hinged on a competitor being willing to hand over the shop, the parts, and a working machine before the sale was final.
What does "we use what we sell" mean for a system buyer?
Quick Answer:
A vendor that runs the same equipment it sells in its own job shop has already found the failure modes, fixtured the awkward parts, and dialed in parameters across a wide range of materials. For the buyer, that means application support comes from people who mark parts for a living, not only from a spec sheet.
Butterly named the three things he looks for in a capital purchase: stability, support, and maintenance. A fiber laser answers the maintenance question on its own — there are no consumables and no user-serviceable parts in the laser, and the air-cooled module runs for years without power degradation. Stability and support are where the dual role matters. Jimani both builds the systems and runs them daily in its own job shop, so when a customer hits a new material or an awkward fixture, the answer comes from someone who has likely already solved it on the floor.
That is also why the application support is unlimited and at no charge. The questions a job shop runs into are the same ones we run into, and a customer who understands the relationship between speed, power, and pulse frequency runs better parts and calls back less often.
Is replacing a YAG marker with a fiber system worth it?
Quick Answer:
Replacing a YAG marker with a fiber system pays off for a job shop when an aging laser is capping throughput, scrapping parts, or putting an anchor customer at risk — the exact conditions Laser Industries faced. For low-volume or occasional marking, the math is different, and sending parts to a job shop may make more sense than new capital equipment.
The decision is not subtle once the numbers are on the table. A shop losing 25% of a run to scrap, capped at 150 parts a day, and one missed deadline away from losing its largest customer is going to justify the equipment quickly. A shop marking a handful of parts a month is not. Laser Industries sat firmly in the first category, which is why a 42-second cycle time and zero plating scrap changed the conversation with their customer overnight.
If you are working through the same call and want a straight answer on whether a fiber system fits your part mix, the fastest way to find out is to send us a sample. We will mark it in our job shop, share the parameters we used, and walk through what an in-house configuration would look like for your volume. If outsourcing is the better answer for your numbers, we will tell you that too.
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