Guide to color stainless steel
Instruction
I see a lot of people having problems getting colors on stainless steel. So I decided to share my method and my results with you.
I tried to make this guide as clear and simple as possible but do not hesitate to tell me if certain points need to be clarified.
Even if your part comes out of an individual bag and seems clean, there may still be residue, invisible to the naked eye.
So you have to clean it, personally I use alcohol wipes and a microfiber cloth.
Take your part and rub it with the wipe, paying particular attention to any traces that may be present, then remove any potential traces left by the alcohol with the microfiber cloth.
In this how to you will find my XCS with some test grinds for the IR and the Blue laser.
This is a starting point that will give you a first sample of the colors you can achieve.
You can of course create more to see if other colors can be obtained.
It should be understood that the color that appears is due to oxidation on the surface of the stainless steel (to simplify things).
Several parameters are therefore taken into account in obtaining the colors:
- Speed
- Power
- Number of lines per centimeter
There are therefore an infinite number of possibilities that will have to be tested depending on what you wish to obtain.
For the blue laser I did not obtain results of 10 to 50% power, which is why you will not find the test grids in the file.
Now that your test grids are ready, you can use them to determine the colors you want to obtain on other files.
Simply read the speed and power of the laser corresponding to the desired color and set it on your file. I advise you to put one color per layer on XCS which will make it easier for you to find your way around.
Note that it is possible to save the parameters in XCS to find your colors more easily, but take care to write them down in a consistent way to find your way easily in relation to your test grids. For example, I recommend this type of notation: IR-200-1P-24/4
which means IR laser with 200 lines/cm, 1 pass, power of 24%, speed of 4 mm/s, this allows you to know exactly what color it is by looking at your grid
Note that blue and IR lasers give very different results on the same support. the IR laser gives a rather matte appearance and is more consistent in its results.
The blue laser gives a brilliant appearance to the color but sometimes seems less constant in the coloring obtained.
Now it's your turn to play and explore all the possibility of the two lasers !
As for creating more complex files such as the examples in the photo, I will do another tutorial.
Please be patient ;)