US 5,239,158 AGranted

Laser marking of molded hand grips

AssigneeEaton Corporation

InventorsTony Locklear, Dennis C. Wyckoff

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Abstract

A method is provided for marking a molded hand grip such as a golf grip (100) with specialized information such as a personalized signature. The method utilizes a laser marking device (50) that is operative to provide an optical beam (8) having power and optical wave length characteristics effective to vaporize a continuous groove or trench and/or adjacently positioned dots in a target region ("R") on the hand grip to which beam (8) is exposed. The marked grip is then removed from device (50) and a selected colorant (16) such as paint or ink of desired color is then deposited in the marking that is preferably bondable to the desired extent to the material from which the hand grip is molded after which any excess colorant is then removed to provide the finished hand grip having the specialized information marked thereon.

Claims10

Dependent claims

A method for marking selected information on a molded hand grip, said method including the steps of;

providing a hand grip molded from a selected laser vaporizable material and having a region thereon to be marked,
providing a laser marking device operative to provide an optical beam having power and optical wave length characteristics effective to vaporize the selected material in a marking form having the breadth and depth desired and having means for receiving the information to be marked and for causing the optical beam to mark said region in the marking form desired upon activation of the optical beam in response to a command signal,
exposing the hand grip region to the optical beam,
initiating the command signal and marking the information on the hand grip region exposed thereto,
removing the laser marked hand grip from the laser marking device,
depositing a selected colorant into the laser marking, and
removing any excess of said colorant from the surface of the hand grip region having the laser marking thereon.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.