Jewelry & materials

Gold is Not Silver: Why Precious Metal Recipes Don't Transfer

If you've cut silver on your fiber laser and expect gold to behave the same, you're in for a surprise. Gold is a different beast, and reusing silver settings will only waste material. This is why.

9 October 2026 · The HagoLaser team · 9 min read

Gold is Not Silver: Why Precious Metal Recipes Don't Transfer

The Problem: Silver is the Hardest Precious Metal

If you've spent any time cutting sterling silver with a fiber laser, you already know it's a demanding material. It chews up passes, demands perfect focus, and still leaves you wondering if your machine is underpowered. Then you try gold, and suddenly the machine feels like it got an upgrade. The truth is, gold is not silver, and the reason you cannot reuse your silver recipes for gold (or vice versa) comes down to fundamental physics: reflectivity and heat conduction.

Our workshop cuts sterling silver every working day. We learned these lessons the hard way, losing precious metal to settings that almost worked, or to parameters that were simply wrong for the material. We built our recipes from the ground up, and we'll share what we've found, including why gold is easier and what numbers we actually use.

Reflectivity and Heat: Why Silver Fights You

A fiber laser operates at a wavelength of 1064 nm. For the laser to do any work – cutting, engraving, melting – its energy has to be absorbed by the material. The more a metal reflects the laser beam, the less energy it absorbs, and the less effective your laser becomes. This is where sterling silver presents its biggest challenge.

Silver is the most reflective metal there is, especially at the 1064 nm wavelength. Imagine trying to warm a mirror with a flashlight; most of the light just bounces off. That's essentially what happens with a fiber laser on silver. On top of that, silver is an excellent heat conductor. Any heat that does get absorbed is quickly dissipated throughout the material, making it harder for the laser to concentrate enough energy in one spot to melt or vaporize the metal efficiently.

This combination of high reflectivity and superb heat conduction is why silver demands so many passes to cut through, and why it rewards correct focus more than just cranking up the power. It's also why silver is notoriously difficult to laser weld compared to gold.

Gold, on the other hand, reflects less of the laser's energy. The difference on the bench is obvious and immediate. The laser works much more effectively on gold; it cuts and engraves more easily than silver with the same machine and operator. If you have only ever cut silver, your first experience with gold will feel like your laser just got a significant power boost.

The Black Paint Trick

For very reflective silver, or when you need to kick-start absorption, there's a crude but effective workaround: paint the surface matt black. A thin coat of any matt black paint will absorb the laser's energy, converting it to heat. The laser then marks through this coating, and the heat does the work on the silver beneath. Afterwards, you simply clean off the paint. It's not elegant, but it works.

Our Sterling Silver Cutting Recipes: The Hard-Won Numbers

Because silver is such a challenging material, getting your settings right is paramount. These are the recipes we have developed and use daily on our 100 W MOPA fiber laser for sterling silver sheet, from 0.25 mm to 1 mm thick. Remember, these are for our machine, our source, and our specific harder silver alloy made for laser work. Always prove any new recipe on scrap first.

Our common cutting recipe for sterling silver is:

The main lever for cutting through is the number of passes. Turning up the power on a job that won't cut usually just widens the kerf and heats the piece, leading to distortion.

Sterling Silver Pass Counts (Measured on Our Machine)

Sheet Thickness (mm) Passes (Sterling Silver)
0.3 ~2 (derived)
0.5 ~6 (derived)
0.8 17
0.9 21
1.0 28-29

These measured points fit a curve of roughly passes ≈ 27.5 × thickness^2.23. While this helps predict recipes for thinner material, every derived recipe must be proven on scrap before use.

Cutting vs. Engraving: Frequency Matters

One of the counter-intuitive findings we made is how frequency behaves differently for cutting and engraving. For deep engraving, lower frequencies (fatter pulses) work best to ablate material. However, for cutting through metal, we found the opposite to be true.

We tested dropping the cutting frequency to 20 kHz on 0.3 mm silver; it cut worse, needing 16 passes and still not going through. Back at 60 kHz, it cuts in a handful. High frequency wins for cutting through; low frequency wins for surface ablation depth.

Wobble: The Unsung Hero of Cutting

Cutting metal with a fiber laser needs wobble. This setting makes the beam oscillate sideways as it follows the cut line, creating a kerf wider than the beam itself. A wider kerf allows molten metal to escape instead of re-welding behind the beam, which is crucial for achieving a clean through-cut.

Our silver cutting recipe uses a wobble diameter of 0.15 mm, end diameter 0.05 mm, and distance 0.07 mm.

A common pitfall we discovered early on was a tiny wobble setting. If the wobble diameter is too small – say, 0.015 mm instead of 0.15 mm due to a decimal place error – the laser effectively acts like it's cutting a thin line. It will mark perfectly, but it will never open the cut. If a recipe that used to cut suddenly only engraves a line, check your wobble diameter before anything else.

Gold: The Easier, But Still Demanding, Precious Metal

Thanks to its lower reflectivity, gold is significantly easier to cut and engrave than silver. However, that doesn't mean you can just port over your silver settings and expect perfection. Gold is still an expensive material, and it has its own nuances, especially when considering different karats and alloys.

The good news is that the core laser recipe doesn't change from silver:

Only the number of passes changes, reflecting gold's better absorption. In practice, for a typical yellow gold, our starting points are roughly half the passes we use for silver of the same thickness.

Gold Pass Counts (Starting Points – Derived, Not Measured)

These figures are derived from our silver measurements, scaled for gold's improved absorption. They are the presets we ship in our own software, labeled as a starting point to be proven on scrap. They assume a typical yellow gold alloy. Karat and alloying metals significantly change how gold behaves, so always test!

Sheet Thickness (mm) Gold Passes (Starting Point)
0.25 - 0.4 2
0.5 3
0.6 4
0.7 6
0.8 9
0.9 11
1.0 14

For comparison, our measured silver at these settings would need 17 passes for 0.8 mm, 21 for 0.9 mm, and 28-29 for 1.0 mm. The difference is substantial.

Always start with fewer passes and work your way up. A cut that doesn't go through means you add one more pass. A cut with too many passes will widen the kerf, heat the piece excessively, and can distort thin sections. Gold is too expensive to learn on through brute force.

Focus Height: The Number That Kills More Cuts Than Any Other

No matter if you're working with gold or silver, focus is paramount. On our machine, and likely on yours, the single biggest fix we ever made to improve cuts was getting the focus height absolutely correct. A mere 2 mm of defocus can turn a perfect cut into no cut at all.

Your machine's factory-calibrated focus lives in EzCad3's Motors.ini as m_dFocusPos. On our machine, this value is -59.6 mm, which is the head position where the platform surface itself is in focus.

When you cut sheet material lying on your platform, the top surface of the material is one thickness above the platform. So the rule for correct focus height is:

Z = focus + material thickness

For example, to cut 1 mm thick silver on our machine, the correct Z-axis position is -59.6 mm (focus) + 1 mm (thickness) = -58.6 mm. We verified this the hard way: -58.5 mm cuts, while -56.5 mm does not cut at all. A ±0.5 mm error is barely noticeable, but 2 mm kills the cut completely.

If your cuts suddenly get worse over time and nothing in your file changed, check your focus before you touch power or passes. A bent jig, thicker material, or a platform that moved slightly can all show up as "the laser got weaker."

Safety First: A Matter of Fact

Operating a fiber marking laser means you are working with a Class 4 device. The 1064 nm beam is invisible and can cause permanent eye damage instantly, silently, and without pain. Laser safety glasses rated for 1064 nm (with an OD suitable for your source power) must be worn by everyone in the room, always. Metal surfaces are mirrors, and reflections go everywhere. Never leave a running job unattended. Metal marking produces metal fume and fine particulate; proper extraction with a filter is essential health equipment. We discuss this in more detail in our Class 4 Laser Safety Checklist.

Finishing the Piece: The Black Edge

Whether you're cutting gold or silver, the laser leaves a black, oxidized edge. The piece straight off the machine is rarely the finished product you sell. Our routine is to polish and bring the shine back after marking. This is a normal part of the job, not a sign something went wrong. Plan for it in your designs: any fine detail or shallow engraving needs to be deep enough to survive polishing without being softened or removed. For silver, especially, this post-laser finishing is critical to achieve a professional look. We cover this process in depth in The Black Edge: Finishing and Polishing Silver After Laser Work.

Practical Takeaways for Your Bench

Here’s what we’ve learned from years of daily work with precious metals on our fiber laser:

By understanding the unique properties of each precious metal and calibrating your machine accordingly, you'll save material, time, and frustration. There are no shortcuts, only diligent testing and precise settings.