Getting Started with Fiber Laser Galvo Marking Machines: EZCAD, Lens Selection, and Settings

Everything else in this site's laser coverage — the Longer Ray5, and CO2 machines — moves the laser head on a gantry across the material. A fiber laser galvo marking machine works completely differently: the beam is steered by two rapidly moving mirrors (the galvanometers), the material stays fixed under a small scan field, and the whole process is built for marking metal, not cutting wood or acrylic. If you're picking up a desktop fiber marking machine for engraving stainless tools, anodized aluminum, or metal tags, the workflow and software are different enough from gantry-style lasers that it's worth a dedicated starting guide.

How Galvo Marking Differs from Gantry Lasers

Gantry Laser (Ray5, CO2)Fiber Galvo Marker Beam movementPhysical head moves on X/Y railsFixed head; beam steered by mirrors, extremely fast Work areaLarge (hundreds of mm), fixed by rail lengthSmall "scan field" per lens (typically 110-175mm square), fixed material position Typical materialsWood, acrylic, leather, some metal coatings (diode); wood/acrylic/some metal (CO2)Bare metal (steel, stainless, aluminum, titanium), some engineering plastics How it marks metalCoating-dependent (marking spray, anodized layer removal)Direct thermal interaction with the metal surface itself — no coating needed SoftwareLightBurnEZCAD2/EZCAD3 (most common), some support LightBurn via added modules

Getting Started with EZCAD

EZCAD is the software that ships with the vast majority of budget-to-midrange fiber marking machines and is a genuinely different interface from LightBurn — it's built around a "mark parameters" table per object (power, speed, frequency, number of passes) rather than a layer-based cut/engrave settings model. Key concepts to learn first:

Pen parameters — each shape or text object gets its own mark parameter set (power %, speed in mm/s, frequency in kHz, and Q-pulse width on MOPA machines), rather than one global setting for the whole job.
Red light positioning — the low-power red diode preview shows exactly where the job will mark before you fire the actual fiber laser, critical for aligning on curved or irregular parts.
Frequency and speed interaction — unlike a CO2 or diode laser where power and speed are the main two dials, fiber marking adds pulse frequency as a third variable that changes the mark's depth, contrast, and finish independently of power/speed.

F-Theta Lens Selection

The F-theta lens determines your scan field size and spot size, and it's typically not something you swap casually — most desktop machines ship with one lens matched to a specific field size:

Lens Field SizeTypical Use 110 x 110mmSmall parts, fine detail, higher power density — best for small serial numbers, jewelry, small tool marking 150-175mm squareGeneral-purpose — the most common stock lens on desktop machines, good balance of field size and detail 200mm+Larger parts or batch layouts, at the cost of some edge distortion and lower power density at the same wattage

A larger field lens lets you mark bigger parts or more parts per setup without repositioning, but spreads the same laser power over a larger area, which usually means slower marking speed or more passes to hit the same mark depth/contrast as a smaller lens.

Marking Settings by Material (Starting Points)

MaterialPowerSpeedFrequencyNotes Stainless steel (black anneal mark)25-40%800-1500 mm/s20-40 kHzLower frequency/higher power biases toward darker annealing marks; test on scrap first, results vary by alloy Stainless steel (deep engrave)70-100%, multiple passes200-500 mm/s60-100 kHzMultiple passes with Z-offset refocus between passes for depth Anodized aluminum15-30%1000-2000 mm/s30-60 kHzRemoves anodized layer to reveal bare aluminum beneath — low power avoids marking the base metal itself Titanium (color marking)10-25%1500-2500 mm/svaries widelyTitanium oxide layer color shifts with heat input — frequency and speed control the resulting color, this is highly machine-specific and needs a test grid

Always run a settings grid (a small matrix of power/speed/frequency combinations) on scrap of your actual material before committing to a production run — fiber marking parameters vary meaningfully between machine brands, laser source (standard fiber vs MOPA), and even between alloy batches of the "same" metal.

Safety

Fiber laser wavelength (typically 1064nm) is invisible and far more dangerous to eyes than CO2 or diode laser light at the same power, because it's not absorbed by the cornea the way longer wavelengths are — it can focus directly onto the retina. Never operate a galvo marking machine with its enclosure open or interlocks defeated, and never look toward the beam path even with the enclosure closed if there's any possibility of a gap or reflective escape. If your machine's enclosure doesn't fully contain the beam, laser safety glasses rated specifically for 1064nm (not generic "laser glasses") are mandatory, not optional.

A fiber galvo marker fills a real gap that gantry lasers can't — permanent, coating-free marking directly into bare metal — and for anyone doing tool marking, part serialization, or metal nameplates, it's worth the learning curve of a genuinely different piece of software and a genuinely different beam-delivery mechanism.

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