Engraving Photos not working as expected

[LeMaBiLi (Marco Nohr)]

Hey Guys,

first of all, i’m using an Ortur Laser Master 2 15W machine.

When i try to engrave any photo to wood, it doesnt really works well.

I tried many different settings and wasted alot of wood and still got no acceptable result.
Please help me out, tell me what i am doing wrong.

Side note: If i engrave Text it works like a sharm. My laser is in focus, i think its only a wrong setting.

Lets begin:
I tried to engrave this picture on different wood-types:

The result looks like this (different settings used like: Different Modes (Jarvis, Dither, Stucki) and different Shape properties used e.g. Gamma 0,65, different contrast and brightness even tried using different speed modes (3000, 2800, 2500) and different DPI (254, 300, 400) on Image Settings window.

Results:

The red circles are the face.

I even tried using everything on deafult, i reset everything to default, but still an unacceptable results.

I imported the photo into Lightburn which automatically took off all the color (greyscaled it), i even tried to greyscale it on my own, with no success.
Please give me some help, any advice because i’m really desperate.

Here are my Controller Logs settings

$0=20 $1=50 $2=0 $3=0 $4=0 $5=0 $6=0 $10=1 $11=0.050 $12=0.002 $13=0 $20=1 $21=1 $22=1 $23=7 $24=600.000 $25=3000.000 $26=100 $27=2.000 $30=1000 $31=0 $32=1 $33=250.000 $100=80.000 $101=80.000 $102=80.000 $110=9000.000 $111=9000.000 $112=9000.000 $120=2200.000 $121=1800.000 $122=2500.000 $130=400.000 $131=430.000 $132=1.000

[LightBurn (Oz)]

That just looks like your machine is very badly out of focus. Focus the laser to the smallest dot that you can, and start with lower DPI, not higher. If you go too high with the DPI it will look like mush. Too low and it will just lose some detail, or you will see fine lines between the passes.

How do I turn on my diode at low power to focus it or frame a job?

Diode lasers often don’t have a red-dot pointer like CO2 lasers do, so it is often useful to enable them at low power for focusing or framing. (Please do NOT do this if you have a CO2 laser, as the beam is invisible and this could blind you or start a fire) In LightBurn, go to Edit > Device Settings, or click here: [image] Turn on the ‘Enable Laser Fire Button’ switch (make it green): [image] Quit LightBurn and re-run it. You will now have two new controls in the Move window. A …

[LeMaBiLi (Marco Nohr)]

@LightBurn and what about the rest?

Just yesterday i fixed my focus so the dot is already very very small, cant smaller it.

Any chance you could have a look on it remotely?

[LightBurn (Oz)]

This is on my Ortur Laser Master 1, using crappy wood I had on hand with too much vertical grain:

I made a single small test to figure out the speed, then just let it go. With another try or two and using better wood, like basswood or alder, the result would have been better, but this is enough to show that your settings aren’t the issue, as it’s much clearer than what you’re showing above.

This is the project file:
WeddingPic.lbrn (1.0 MB)

[LeMaBiLi (Marco Nohr)]

WOW, i’m trying out your file now and post the result in a few mins.

I’m impressed that you can use 4200/90 and get a result like that.

I’m 100% sure mine wont do results like that on that high speed.

But we’ll see in a moment.

[LeMaBiLi (Marco Nohr)]

Nothing really happened with your settings, whats wrong?

[LightBurn (Oz)]

You likely aren’t focused properly. Have you ever done a ramp test? (Google it)

[LeMaBiLi (Marco Nohr)]

Hey @LightBurn, i did a ramp test already and did ot again, the perfect hight is 5.5cm (measured from the bottom of the lens)

I cleaned the lens and re-setted the focus, everything seems to be fine.

Now on another try, i used bamboo wood, played around with some settings, and the result is still awful.

Any ideas?

Side Note: this are 3 Images, i stopped them before they were finally engraved, just for testing.

The writing above the images are the used settting: For example 1800speed/60power 254dpi, Mode Stucki

I even took your Image shape properties as seen below

The image looks pretty good contrasted.

[LightBurn (Oz)]

Bamboo is horrible for consistency, and when you change material, your settings will change. You’ll get much better results if you stick with one material and tune until you have that working, then try something else, tune that one, and so on.

[LeMaBiLi (Marco Nohr)]

True about sticking to one material, but bamboo is what we need and want to do in the future.

Any suggestions about that @LightBurn?

And what would you recommend to stick with to engrave images?

[LightBurn (Oz)]

Basswood, alder, maple all work well. Birch isn’t as good, but it’s cheaper. Bamboo is edge grain and a lot of binding material, so it’s really inconsistent, even when just doing simple engraving.

[LeMaBiLi (Marco Nohr)]

Okay. And I was able to make a pretty good example on a different wood. Do you have any suggestions on how to make it better? @

Used settings were 2800/100 254DPI Stucki
And ofc your shape properties given by you in the lb file

[LightBurn (Oz)]

Try a mixture of about 1 teaspoon of baking soda in 1/4 cup of water. Mix it, put it in a spray bottle (like you would use for spraying perfume). Spray the side of the wood you are going to engrave and let it dry. When you engrave that, it will burn much darker, so you will likely need to increase your speed, or reduce the power when using that method.

Otherwise, I would suggest lowering the speed to get a darker burn and more contrast.

[LeMaBiLi (Marco Nohr)]

Hey @LightBurn, i’m still impressed that you made that image with a speed of 4200 and power only at 90% with an Ortur Laser.

I’ve got the Ortur Laser Master 2 15w and i cant even engrave just black and white images like text or any other stuff at that speed, because the wood seems to be untouched.

I mostly use about 2700-3000 Speed and always 100% Power.

Whats wrong here? The time to finish jobs is just to much but i cant really fasten it.

Any ideas?

@LightBurn

This is on my Ortur Laser Master 1, using crappy wood I had on hand with too much vertical grain:

I made a single small test to figure out the speed, then just let it go. With another try or two and using better wood, like basswood or alder, the result would have been better, but this is enough to show that your settings aren’t the issue, as it’s much clearer than what you’re showing above.

This is the project file:
WeddingPic.lbrn (1.0 MB)

[LightBurn (Oz)]

What material are you trying to use? Diodes are very sensitive to proper focus, so get the dot (or line) to the finest you possibly can before you start. Also, make sure you have LightBurn configured (in the settings) to mm/minute, not mm/sec (the default) as that would cause you trouble as well.

[LeMaBiLi (Marco Nohr)]

@LightBurn I’ve done all that already.

I’m using different wood types to test settings on each wood.

But I was never able to get higher than 3000 maybe 3200