Pretty colors on titanium

Hello, beautiful people of Lightburn community, I’ve been practicing doing work with larger (10x10cm) color engravings on titanium (GR5/Ti-6Al-4V alloy) using a 60W MOPA. After so many ruined samples and so much testing here are some of my better finished works. :grinning_face:

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Thats awsome work Povilas.

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Thank you!

Titanium + Labor = $$$$

That´s awesome!!!
:astonished_face:
What thickness is the titanium sheet?
Is it similar to stainless steel, where thickness is directly related to how heating causes color changes?

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Thank you! The sheets these are printed on are 1.5mm, but I think it was an overkill and have ordered 1mm sheets next, I believe they should be thick enough for colors to be stable (most likely something like 0.8mm should be enough). For titanium I found that the finnicky colors are affected much more by how much off-center the engraving is, though with painstaking testing you can find alternative settings for colors that are much less affected by that too.

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Well, it’s beautiful :slight_smile: more cool works on titanium!

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Thank you, seeing your works on titanium was an inspiration! I’m currently experimenting with printing dithered raster images on titanium, will post my results and the process here when I have something good to show.

Change of thickness will cause a shift in colors. You mention this when it’s off center.

I have given up, don’t have the time and/or money to pursue color with my fiber.

They do look great.

:grinning_cat:

It is a big pain for sure, but as they say no pain no gain. :smiley: Doing it because I love learning and as a hobby for the sake of the art and craft and not for profit is a key that helps a lot.

Doing it in steps helps, first you discover some colors, then imagine and do tests on what dimensions/parameters influence the colorful patterns and do iterative tests until you gain some intuition, then do bigger tests and so on. Multivariate testing helps reduce time, but is a pain in itself, as you have to keep multiple variables in mind.

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