How can I engrave this image on canvass for my son? If you can think of what colors to use as well I would be most grateful. I have a Longer Ray5 10W laser.
Lasers only have 2 colors: Burned and Not Burned.
You have a serious challenge here. I did some engraving on white canvas where the difference between black and a hole was a very fine line. Every laser and piece of canvas is different, so you will have to do a lot of testing, you will have to do a lot of testing, you will have to do a lot of testing.
That was not a typo.
I recommend you crop out a piece of the image, maybe around the sword, and test with that. It will give the dynamic range from black to white, but not take all day running one test. Once you get the speed and power dialed in, you can then TEST once more with the full image.
Also play with the different dithers. Most people mention Jarvis or Stucki, and say avoid Grayscale. Strangely enough, I did better with Grayscale.
When you get some output, come back with images and someone might be able to help you more.
Thanks! I asked about colors because I had seen posts where people spray painted a canvas then engraved it with a laser. Some beutiful pieces.
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I have tried the canvas paint&engrave before (10W diode).
It does work in that the laser can burn away the upper color layers leaving the lower layer, but so far after maybe a half dozen tests on 4” x 4” canvas on hardboard, I’ve only achieved what I’d consider modest success.
Testing, as I believe was mentioned, is the only way to learn the required parameters.
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Hi Carl
While I haven’t worked with canvas yet nor layered paint to any great degree, can I suggest that given the surface texture of canvas, you might also consider doing a Scan angle of zero degrees and scan again at 90 degrees…Maybe a slightly reduced Power eg 15% to 17.5 as your scanning twice.
On wood this helps with gaps in the grain and wood fibres and may give better coverage on canvas, I also use 30 to 45 degrees single pass.
The advice given above by MikeyH is a great way to save material and time and may I also suggest that some Image adjustments be made to better define the grey tones that exist between Darkest and Brightest.
You might try something like:- Stuki, Contrast 17, Brightness -8, Gamma 0.625, ER 4, EA 100 and see by comparison what you think yourself.
ON many occasions (mostly) I use a DPI 204 with my 20w diode (dot size 0.8x0.1) and get good enough image quality results and job time but this also helps to avoid overburning (heat accumilation)…I usually begin testing at Speed 3000mm/min and Power 20%.
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