I have had great results from B/W line drawings and even from rendering B/W pictures although the settings are very touchy. What I have greatly confusing is the printing of high contrast B/W images. I cannot get areas that appear fully black to print as anything but outlines of the black areas.
I can open a preview window and it appears that the black areas are fully burned. At this time I am using basswood with speeds of 50 and powers of 10 which work GREAT for true B/W images.
I feel my troubles are coming from the 00 through 29 sort of settings settings and not really ‘groking’ what the heck is going on with those 29 settings for a given layer.
I want to print an imported high contrast B/W image where I maxed out contrast so I have 255,255,255 for areas I do NOT want to print and areas of 0,0,0 for areas I want burned.
The other HIGHLY confusing issue is I can do a preview and it looks FANTASTIC yet when I do the engraving to wood it is like only outlines show up for the solid dark and large black areas that I want fully burned.
This is GREATLY difficult to understand the ‘Mode’ colume for what the heck Line, Fill and Offset Fill are meant to do AND the preview shows it looking GREAT but broad black areas have totally open central areas.
The product is great but figuring out this issue has been … dare I say … hell,. Thanks.
The preview can only show you when it will be lasing, not the effect on the material.
If I’m engraving steel or wood, the preview will be the same. How would it know what effect, if any, the laser has on a users material?
Most engraving has little grayscale ability. Even wood has a very compressed range from light to dark compared to a photograph. This is corrected by the applied dither (image mode), much like a printing press… So you can’t do a photograph per se, but you can sure make the brain think it is… much like a printing press does.
There are some incredible images out there done with a laser…
I’d suggest few things…
Watch this video from Laser Everything. It’s very clear on what’s going on. Although done with a fiber laser, it works for any laser with any material. It will help get you started. Interval is a critical setting.
Use laser tools → materials test to determine some good starting speed/power/interval
Understand how the tools, such a preview work. It isn’t very useful if you don’t understand what it’s telling you.
Realize you’ve picked the most difficult laser project possible … you have all my sympathy.
There are lots of control settings. These are described in the documentation.
@jkwilborn - You Rock! Your reply was about pictures and the link you gave was very informative and useful. I have done pictures with success but that pots will take them up a knotch next time I do pictures!
The REAL problem I had has been solved so let me share because my initial post rambled on too much.
My REAL problem with high contrast Black or white images so others may benefit. They would print edges ONLY no matter what intensity I set.
Solution: Do NOT try to print pure black to pure white jpeg images as the black I feel was out of limits for my DIY laser. I found that If I made the darkest black part of the high contrast imported picture be grey such as 140,140,140 I can then print as an image and get great picture. The problem was when I printed images that had black as 0 that was some special case and ‘confused’ my PWM input to my laser. You cannot use the max that that becomes which is 255pwm.
So solution for high contrast black or white was do NOT have totally black input and have it like a 50/50 grey then I can print as an image.
Anyway, thanks for your fast and great replies which in this case will help for the pictures I do with ditther which I also enjoy a lot. I hope this post helps others.
I’m assuming when you said basswood you are referring to plywood. If not please disregard this reply. The wood “skin” on the plywood (2mm - 5mm) is very thin. I’ve had similar effects as you describe as being that you’ve burned through the wood “skin” and are showing the inter-glue/binder. This appears lighter (depending on the binder/glue they are using). The outside edge you are seeing is the edge of the burned wood with the light color being the glue/binder used on the plywood. By turning down the max power (by not going higher than 140,140,140 gray) you are stopping the burning off of the wood and exposing the plywood’s binder. Its very easy to prove. Get a piece of pure wood (basswood if you can find it) and use your original burn settings (going all the way to 256,256,256 gray). If I’m correct your problem should disappear.
