New Lightburn user here and 1st post! I have a Gweike G2 30 watt and want to engrave grayscale photos on stainless steel in Lightburn. I was able to do this on my old 5w diode laser running GRBL; and the Glaser software that came with my Gweike machine does a pretty good job although it has it’s limitations.
I have tried literally a hundred different combination of settings in Lightburn and cannot get the grayscale mode to work! It prints just fine in modes such as stucki and jarvis. Also prints in “passthru” mode but this results in just black/white with no shades of grey. I would really like to get the grayscale mode to work. Has anybody had any success with grayscale on stainless?
Please see the attached picture. I start with a background pass as a white background 835 mm/sec, 63.3 power, 60 Hz. I have tried all sorts of different settings, different images, etc and grayscale just looks awful.
Why not use the settings, corrected for the higher power, that worked previously? In fact, I think you can actually deep-cut the metal with a fiber machine. I know the diode and fiber are different worlds, but that is just a parameter problem to be solved.
Hi Gerald
Can you try this:-
To achieve high-quality grayscale engraving, the image should first be saved in Bitmap mode, converted to grayscale, and then to a halftone screen for better definition.
That was different software. LaserGRBL I believe. I’d like to get this working in Lightburn. The issue isn’t the settings, but the grayscale function itself.
Well I saved to bitmap, converted to grayscale and then hit a brick wall. My software doesn’t offer halftone, but with a little research I discovered that’s actually converting the image into dots. I could probably do that in Gimp (newsprint filter), but this isn’t really what I’m looking for. I would like a true grayscale. Anyway, printing the bmp/grayscale image didn’t work either.
Is your speed a bit quick, have you tried 100 to 150mm/sec?
Have you tried power as low as 30% to 50%?
I dont know much about it yet, but the lightburn 2.0 version has a much better power control per pixel (sorry if that is not aplicable in this case) and thats not to say you cant do it as is.
I think you should try faster, or maybe a material test first. Besides what kinda lens/workspace do you have? Why do you try the same bitmap with different formats? does not really make sense.
I understand that. But my LaserGRBL with a 5w diode and G-Laser with my 30w fiber can do this on stainless steel. The problem is that Lightburn can’t to it.
