LONGER How To: Get Colored Shades Engravings with Longer Ray5 & B1

How to Get Colored Shades Engravings with Longer Ray5 & B1

Longer Laser Engravers are machines capable of carrying out fantastic engraving and cutting jobs with a multiplicity of different materials; Among these works, the most beautiful and attractive are certainly the colored engravings, based on many different colors, able to fascinate thanks to their peculiarity. Multi-colored engravings are only feasible by engraving metals, which allow you to obtain a colored effect thanks to their shiny metal surface. Since it comes to engraving metals, there is often a tendency to believe that multicolor engravings are a peculiarity only of the most powerful laser engravers, however it may come as a surprise that even less powerful laser engravers can make multicolor engravings. Multicolor engravings can be made with Longer Ray5 10W, Longer Ray5 20w, Longer B1 20w, Longer B1 30w and Longer B1 40w, therefore the minimum power required is 10w, while the maximum power is not limited; Obviously, a less powerful laser may eventually obtain fewer shades of color than a more powerful laser, and the engraving parameters will also vary according to the power of the laser module in use.

In order to find out which colors can be obtained with your laser module, and with which engraving parameters, you can use the useful Lightburn function that allows you to perform a Material Test tool, which allows you to quickly determine the most specific and correct parameters. From the Lightburn home screen, select Laser Tools – Material Test, this screen will open:

First, set the Count value to 10 for Vertical with a range between 100 and 1500 mm/min for Speed, and a Count to 10 for Horizontal with a range between 10% and 100% for Power; Also, set Height and Width to 5.00 mm.

In this way it is possible to obtain a good color table according to a given power and at a certain speed. To be able to evaluate a greater amount of color shades, simply increase the Count Value for Vertical and Horizontal, possibly setting them to 20 or more.

Next, proceed with Edit Text Setting:

This screen is used to engrave the labels of the test table. Since it is an engraving on metal, set the suggested parameters (mm/min Speed and % Power) for your specific laser module about metal engraving; Also, set Mode Fill.

Confirm by pressing OK.

At this point, proceed with Edit Material Settings:

In this screen you can set the method of processing the material; since it is a matter of engraving, select Mode Fill.

Confirm by pressing OK.

Once back on the main screen, connect your Longer Laser Engraver to Lightburn by USB cable and start the test. When your machine has completed the job, reviewing the table will help you determine which parameters correspond to the various colors. After this, when you will realize a new project to engrave on metal, it’s enough to set the parameters reported in the test result for getting the color you like.

This test was obtained with Longer Ray5 10w, which is able to express up to 90 different colors when engraving on metal. If you have a more powerful laser module, the shades of colors that can be obtained will be greater, and you only need to perform a test with more vertical and horizontal columns to be able to evaluate in detail the correct parameters to obtain each shade.