In testing I’ve noticed my Grayscale engraving looks much better when two passes are done in opposite directions. With typical dithered engraving we have the option to cross-hatch the passes. I don’t see a similar option in Grayscale. Is there a way to do this automatically?
I did it manually by making a second copy of the image into a second layer and changing its engrave direction by 90 degrees. However, the product I’m making is pretty massive, about 60 inches by 6 inches, so even sliced up two copies of that raster bog down the file and my Ruida laser started messing up badly about halfway through the 2nd raster.
So, at this point, I will likely need to make a seperate 2nd file for each chunk of the pass-through work with the second copy of the raster. If Lightburn had a way to automate crosshatch with Grayscale I wouldnt need a second image. Am I just missing something?
SECOND BONUS QUESTION: Are there any tricks to sending grayscale to laser and then running it from the laser? I sent the file to run from Laser as that often eliminates these weird random messups on large rasters, but my laser said max power was 10%. I never run files from my laser so I was pretty concerned that even if I increased the max power to what it should be it wouldnt run with the grayscale. Anyone got experience with that?
Might check out this thread. Grayscale is difficult. A laser is like a printing press, only on or off, so most use some type of dithering to ‘fool the eye’.
Doesn’t directly address your issue, but I think it will help.
I have a 50 watt co2, I just don’t use the grayscale option. Tried it and didn’t have the patience.
Cross-hatch isn’t given as an option for images for a couple of reasons - the biggest being that dithering is done after sizing and rotating the image so it lies in the direction of the scan. If you did a second pass after rotating 90 degrees, the dithering pattern would be different.
Grayscale is rarely the best option for a CO2 laser - they don’t respond linearly to power output, and they have a low-cut point below which they don’t ionize, so it’s painful to dial in. They also tend to remove variable depth, not produce variable shading.
Grayscale takes much more data - the commands sent to the machine are about 10 to 15 times larger than those used for dithering, so it eats memory very quickly and is harder for the controller to process at high speed.
