I am engraving memorial plaques using brass/black acrylic. Each plaque has a person’s name and date of death in two languages. I lay out each one as an SVG, then convert the text into SVG paths using Inkscape.
Here is an example SVG previewed in a web browser and imported into Lightburn:
I need to match the existing design of other plaques, so I did some tests printing over existing mis-printed plaques from the previous person with this job (with the text repositioned into blank spaces on the existing plaque).
The image is duplicated here so I could mark it up: the red boxes are the existing text, the green boxes are an aborted test running at Longer’s recommended settings (35% power / 3000mm/min), and the blue boxes are slowed down to 1000mm/min.
The problem is that the glyphs are all wavy - the edges of the characters don’t line up. I can’t tell if slowing it down made the issue a little but better or not, but it by no means cleared it up.
Is there a setting I need to adjust for this?
Perhaps over-scanning? Or bi-directional fill?
I’m going to do some tests with cardboard, but I wanted to see if someone can point me to what I should be looking for before I start jujst fiddling with settings.
Moshe
Have you used this machine previously without issue.
The work by the previous person looks normal but the more recent work looks “In my non expert opinion” to have mechanical issues.
The speeds seem reasonable although I have no experience with that machine, especially at speed1000mm/min which is not excessive.
Did it engrave from bottom up or top down.
I would say there is a mechanical problem at the source of this outcome so can you check belt tension and listen for sounds that dont belong and check for loose screws and slackness, loosness. Is the laser head secure.
There is a good guide to mechanical checks here on lightburn that will help you identify such problems if they exist, I’ll post it here for you if I can find it.
Check all your drive pully and coupler screws and laser head for any loosness.
If mechanically sound then I would try scanning offset adjustment and line interval test.
The circles in the top left have breaks in them instead of being perfectly circular, and the corners of the diamond to the right of that don’t quite match up. Also, the two small squares in the center-right have a bit of a jagged lower-left corner.
