Acrylics account for some of the most popular items awards retailers provide for their customers’ recognition products. And with more retailers employing laser engraving systems to professionally embellish these items, A&E asked a number of its professionals to offer insightful technical tips and tricks to help retailers produce the best in acrylic awards.

Acrylics account for some of the most popular items awards retailers provide for their customers’ recognition products. And with more retailers employing laser engraving systems to professionally embellish these items, A&E asked a number of its professionals to offer insightful technical tips and tricks to help retailers produce the best in acrylic awards.

From creatively using halftones to generate a “reflecting image,” to adding bold or subtle colors either before or after lasering; from creating 3-D engraving or using dithering patterns for different looks, to producing photo reproductions with myriad shades of gray; as well as other techniques, laser engraving on acrylics continues to evolve into an award offering that adds a new dimension in high-quality to the retailers’ technical repertoire.

What the following industry professionals present here is just the beginning in demonstrating what can be done with an acrylic item and a CO2 laser engraver.

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Turn A NegativeInto A Positive

A simple conversion of a photograph into a grayscale negative gives a dramatic look to an acrylic memento.

In today’s market, laser engraving on acrylic is widespread and easily available. But to engrave a photo on acrylic awards, that is a much more uncommon technique. This technique is in high demand but has yet to become as widely available as regular engraving. Here are some tips to help you along in perfecting this much desired technique.

First of all you must ensure that the image you wish to engrave is clean and clear. The image may be in either black-and-white or color. If it is a photograph, you should scan it into your computer at 300 dpi to ensure clarity of image. If the original image is in color, you must then convert it to grayscale. Image quality is a critical factor of success.

Once you have the image on your computer, open it with an image-editing program such as Adobe Photoshop or CorelDRAW. Once you have done so, you must convert the image to negative. It is important that you do this, as it will not engrave properly without it. The laser will burn where the now-negative “color” appears in the image, darker or lighter depending on the original color. However, acrylic becomes white when it comes into contact with the laser beam. Therefore, in order to maintain the correct image, it must be first converted. Once this has been done, save the image.

After sending the image file to the engraving machine, the settings on the machine must be adjusted to properly engrave the acrylic piece. The engraving speed should be set at between 80% and 100% to ensure clarity of the final product. The power setting should be between 20W and 25W. With these settings you will achieve a clearly engraved picture without compromising the details of the image.