I’ve been experimenting with different image modes using this picture:
So far I am not really satisfied with the results (below). Any suggestions would be appreciated. After doing materials tests I settled in Spd2000/Pwr20 fore everything but Grayscale where I did Spd2000/Pwr2.5%-25%, if that matters.
Thanks!
Halftone - 75DPI
Newsprint
Stucki
Dither
Grayscale - This one particularly looks like crap, I imagine I should have set the min power to 0%.
Not sure what your standard is, but that Stucki burn looks pretty good to me.
Your issue is that serious wood grain pattern. It really keeps your images from showing greater detail. That is something you cannot do very much about. You need to use a very fine grain wood like Baltic Birch ($), basswood ($$), beech (?) for light woods and Cherry, Maple, and Walnut ($$$) for darker woods.
I had wondered about the wood. I am currently experiment with scraps from the panels I used to make my enclosure, so not exactly top grade stuff. Cuts great, line engraving too, but I’m thinking I’ll need to get some better stuff for greyscale images.
I just saw a video that shows Basswood is better than Baltic Birch, but cost 4x as much. I can live with the lesser performance. 
That looks like mahogany door skin or something like that.
You will likely find better results using a wood with less grain or that is less porous.
Using a Maple or even Birch plywood can offer a nice smooth surface.
Using a 150 or 200 grit sandpaper to smooth the surface first can also help.
It looks like you’re already on your way to finding some reasonable settings, those are often hard to find and may defer depending on the type of image.
Hey Cab
Thats a link to Gils vid for speed and power test, you can download it from the page.
I found it really helpful. if you follow along with what he does and then Just change the power up or down and observe the difference.
I burned a series of these on a sheet of ply at different power settings and keep it close by for refrence.
what you see on screen is seldom what it burns like, so learn your Con, Bri, Gam. Enhance and Enhance Amount. Line interval..helps a lot with visual perception and saves time and overburn..making things darker than they should be "You can be playing with light and contrast a lot when all along the dots were just too close to each other.
Burning on 250-300 gsm card (generally not white or cream) is quick n easy and saves tons of wood working..at low power though!.
A hand sander can clean up a sheet to ply really nice.
Jumping into greyscale straight away can be tricky without good control of settings mentioned and Stuki and Jarvis are a good option for learning progress.
There’s no really quick way to getting it right except diligence in practice and there are lots of other things to learn about the machine and software at the same time.
This is kinda where I’m at after a few weeks of Focused learning and practice..its not brilliant but its a lot better than previous.
