Our Longer Ray 5 10w Laser Machine Review – Material Settings

This is our review of the Longer Ray 5 10w laser engraving and cutting machine. We tested a number of different materials and we will go through each test and give you the settings that we found worked for us. Remember to always do a test on your material before committing to a full project.

Part 1 of this review is a demo of the machine which you can watch below:

This is the video for Part 2 which is a test for various materials:

Our Ray5 Laser has a number of great safety features so we will talk about them. Then we’ll take a closer look at the 3.5” touchscreen and finally wrap up with our final thoughts.

Buying Links

Longer Ray5 10w Laser Engraving and Cutting Machine.

Cutting & Engraving Files

Those of you who follow our YoutTube channel and our blog are aware that we generally use files from Creative Fabrica for our tutorials. They have an enormous range of files available so you are bound to find something for your current laser or even scrapbooking project.

The files we used in this tutorial are listed below.

Creative Fabrica

• Creative Fabrica Membership
• Friends & Family Coaster Quote
• Round Coasters Bundle
• Shark Monster Truck
• Tea Goes Here Quote
• Leather Patch Bundle
• Laser Cut Heart

Now before we get started on the material testing let’s take a look at what we consider are the Pros and Cons of the Longer Ray 5.

Pros

• The machine is relatively easy to set and get it connected to your computer.
• You can work offline.
• The 3.5″ touch screen is easy to read and navigate.
• The TF card has all the material test settings, manuals, instructional videos, software and sample files.
• This is an inexpensive laser so it’s ideal for a beginner or as a starter for an older child.
• It’s very quiet. We were really impressed with how quiet it is.
• There is a large working area 400mm x 400mm
• You can upgrade the 10w laser module to a 20w laser module
• Compatible with both Lightburn and LaserGRBL
• Can be used with the MKSLaser APP

Cons

• The USB card slot is in an odd spot coming out from the top of the machine.
• The cables can look a bit messy
• The tilt cut out function didn’t work on our machine

Material Tests

MDF Coaster – Engraving

Let’s start by engraving some MDF. It’s pretty much the first thing we test when get a new machine.

We chose a quote SVG from Creative Fabrica ” to engrave on our coaster.

This was our first attempt and it can always be a bit tricky trying to position something perfectly with a new machine. We measured the coaster, found the center point, and placed a pencil mark at that spot.

This did help but unfortunately the design had a swoosh at the end of the letter ’S’ so when we ran the framing it took the swoosh into account and the design ended up being a little to the left. 

Settings

• Material – MDF
• Speed – 3540
• Power – 64%

It came out pretty well although maybe just a tad too intense. I would probably reduce the settings a little the next time.

MDF Coaster – Cutting

Next we decided to cut some 3mm MDF and again we used a design from Creative Fabrica.

The file we downloaded was a designs, so we cut two of these.

is our go to site to find designs to use with our laser machines. I definitely recommend getting the yearly subscription. It’s such great value for money as you can download as much as you like from their website.

Settings Used

• Material – MDF
• Speed – 300
• Power – 100%

The first one we cut came out beautifully. You’ll notice on the back that it has cut through cleanly and the pieces just popped out easily. 

And since the first one came out so well, we decided to cut a second one.

The file bundle has four coaster designs and a box to hold the coasters in. I’d really like to engrave the whole set but will do it with a better material. MDF is not a fan of moisture so they wouldn’t last particularly long.

I think a bit of air assist would have helped here to reduce the slight burning on these coasters and Longer do sell a kit as an optional accessory.

Unfortunately, we don’t have one to review so I can’t say how good it is but I would always recommend getting air assist for anyone who is going to be doing a lot of cutting with their laser. If you are primarily going to be engraving then air assist is something you don’t really need.

Card Stock – Cutting

Next on the list to try out was cardstock. As I have mentioned in previous videos, I like making cards, journals and other paper crafts, so I always like to test out a new laser with cardstock to see how well it cuts and engraves.

We used a from Creative Fabrica and the Ray 5 did a beautiful job. It was super fast and only took about a minute to cut. You can check out how fast the machine cut out this heart in real time, in the video.

It’s still a bit fiddly to weed out all the pieces so you have to be a bit careful here but the final result is so worth it. And as we know, paper crafters aren’t fazed by weeding out teeny tiny bits of paper.

This heart will look really nice on the front of a Valentines Day card.

Card Stock – Engraving

We decided to use the same design but this time engrave it. For this test used the same card stock.

Settings

• Card Stock
• Speed – 6000
• Power – 10%

This came out extremely well as you can see here.

In the past we have found that darker card stock seems to work better when we are engraving. Although having said that we did try out engraving on a piece of yellow cardstock and it worked very well. I think it depends on the brand of card stock you are using. 

Aluminium Plate – Engraving

For this test we used the file from Creative Fabrica.

We thought we might try some aluminium business cards next and I think we can all see that the settings for the first attempt weren’t right. 

We went with a setting of 3000 speed and 100% power.

You can see the black charring on it so those settings were way too intense.

Even so, with a bit of a clean up with some isopropyl alcohol, it still looked okay.

However, we weren’t really happy with it so we did a bit more testing and came up with the following settings.

Settings

• Material – Aluminium Plate
• Speed – 6000
• Power – 80%

This worked a lot better – the image is a lot cleaner with no soot or charring.

But ultimately it all comes down to preference really and the look you are wanting to achieve.

Slate Coaster – Engraving

Slate is always nice to engrave with so we downloaded a coaster bundle file from Creative Fabrica and since we are big time tea drinkers, we chose a for this one.

The Ray5 did a beautiful job engraving on the slate coaster.

If you are a beginner to laser engraving, then I recommend starting with MDF and slate. Those two materials are great to get started with as they always seem to engrave really well.

Settings

• Material – Slate
• Speed – 6000
• Power – 80% power. 

I was really happy with how this turned out.

Leather

Next, we tried cutting and engraving a piece of leather. We really only have scrap pieces of leather so they probably aren’t the best to work with but we gave it a shot.

We just wrote some text and the shape is from a Creative Fabrica

It took a bit of testing to get the right settings. We aren’t experts at working with leather and I think that with a better quality leather we might not have the shredding issue you see here.

Settings

Engrave

• Material – Leather
• Speed – 2000
• Power – 40%
• Mode – Fill

Cut

• Speed – 500
• Power 90
• Mode – Line

It took approx. 1 min to engrave and cut out the leather.

Denim – Engraving

For our final test, we thought we’d try out a bit of denim. So we set up a mini-grid with four different settings in Lightburn based on the settings that Longer recommend for denim which is 2000 speed and 25% power.

This didn’t go too well as you can see here. Engraving on denim can be tricky. If you don’t do it right you will end up just shredding the material.

We tried a second test but this time upping the speed to 8000 and you can see that turned out a lot better.

Once we had a setting that worked we tried a design which in this case was the American Eagle that we have used in a few of our videos now. This turned out great.

Settings

• Material – Denim
• Speed – 8000
• Power – 20% power

Working Offline

Now, this machine has a few features that we didn’t get into in the first video and one of them is the 3.5” touch screen. This essentially allows you to work offline.

As long as you have a laser design that has been saved as a GCode file then you can use this machine without having to connect it to a computer. How great is that?

This makes it handy for those who keep their computer inside and their laser machine is in an outside workshop or garage.

You can save your file as a GCode file and then load that file onto the TF card that is included with the machine.

Once you insert the card into the slot at the top of the machine, you can access the file on the touch screen.

Use the arrows to nudge the laser module around to get it in the right position and when you are ready, click the FRAME option to see where your design is going to be placed. You can make adjustments until you have the material in the right spot.

Once you are happy with the placement, click on CONFIRM and the laser will start to engrave your design.

This touch screen is easy to navigate and makes a nice addition for a machine at this price point. 

Here’s the result.

SAFETY FEATURES

Basic Safety Features

In terms of safety features, the Longer Ray 5 comes with the safety glasses which are pretty much standard with most laser machines.

And of course, there is a protective cover which covers the laser head module.

It is open at the back so just keep that in mind if your machine is facing in a particular direction as anyone standing behind the machine, including children and pets, will be able to see the laser itself and this can cause damage to the eyes. So do make sure that everyone around the laser is wearing their protective goggles.

Auto Shutdown for Machine Tilting

One safety feature I always like to see on a laser machine is movement protection and Longer does state on their website that it has tilt protection. However, when we tested this it didn’t appear to work. (Watch the video above to see this in action.)

We did contact Longer twice about this but had zero response. So keep that in mind that it may not work.

Auto Shutdown for flame detection

Longer have also included flame detection so if the machine detects flames it will automatically shut down. We didn’t test this out ourselves so can’t vouch for it.

Conclusion

So what are our final thoughts?

Well, first of all we had a lot of fun with this machine. It was relatively easy to set up and get connected. Just take your time with the timing strips.

The documentation on the TF card is well done and includes the manuals, instructional videos, software and sample files.

For the price, this machine is a really good deal, however, the fact that they didn’t respond to our questioning about the tilt protection hasn’t inspired confidence.