Laser engraving photos

[NeedyPickle]

Hi,

I used a lase cutter in July to engrave a photograph and the result was stunning. I only needed to adjust contast and brightness on photoshop then set the laser cutter to engrave. The laser cutter was a 30w HB model.

I am struggling to get my 3060 to give me a reasonable image as every time I send it to download it asks me to change it to half tone and bitmap. This really doesn't give a particularly good image.

Does anyone know why the HB laser cutter just engraved the photo without messing about with 'bit' etc and gave me an excellent result?

Why won't my 3060 do this for me?

Any suggestion would be appreciated?

Pickle

[Spooky]

as far as I know Ali some lasers have the ability to vary beam power based on greyscale density.HPC systems don't have that function but then again they also don't cost £20k

[Pedro_Hernandez]

Hi, I was equaly fustrated as you when I couldnt get my 3020 to photo engrave as easily as the Epilogs I used to use.

It is possibble to achieve the same results but require's a lot artworking and preparation of the file or investment in a photo engraving software.

I dont know how I would go about it in photoshop but In Corel photo paint I went through a whole load of steps to get a satisfactory result, the very last step was to save as a 1 bit B&W BMP, which is dithered using either Jarvis or Stucki . See Below.

http://www.laserscript.co.uk/phpBB3/vie ... =293#p1694

The substrate and power is largely going to determine the results as well as ensuring your image DPI matches closely to your scangap, a bit of trail and error untill you get the recipe right. Good Luck !.

Peter

[NeedyPickle]

I am a bit depressed about this.

I spent two months investigating what was the best laser to buy. I sent a sample to all of the companies and each one said their lasers were capable of producing the end result that I wanted. Mantech even sent me a video of their machine engraving the glass.

I think I may have made a massive mistake and am now possibly left with a credit card bill for 'a pig in a poke'.

Sorry about this response but I am struggling at the moment and am not quite sure what to do.

Pickle

[Spooky]

The best laser to buy is the Arclight 7000 but then again it's near 2 million pounds Ali

One of the biggest problems with laser machines is the expectations of what they can or can't do.You'd be supprised by the number of mails I get from people who can't understand why their £5000 laser won't cut 20mm stainless steel or why tubes wear out at 300 quid a time. It's about a balance between the machines capability and the price.
I looked at quite a few different ones before getting my first 6840 and sure many of them were faster, more accurate or had features the 6840 didn't offer BUT when I looked again all those features came at a price and one I wasn't prepared to pay out for on a whim.

I like Epilog machines and the samples were excellent...that said they didn't mention re-gassing costs £3000 every 2 years and a new set of optics are £1500 with a new RF unit being a tad over £7000 if it failed.

I have 2 metal cutting lasers at £200,000 a time and the results on wood are bloody aweful,they do little more than just set it on fire!!

Sad to say it's horses for courses, if you want the ease of Epilog then be prepared to pay epilog prices

best wishes

Dave

[tweakie]

If you are using Corel then the Gold Method plugin will convert your images in much the same way as the PhotoGrav package (but at a much reduced cost). It is not one of those things that work 'straight out of the box' you have to work on it and experiment a bit but once you have it right the results can be excellent even with a constant power setting.

(I no longer use this method as I have now switched to using a Mach3 plugin which follows grayscale but that is proving bit of a challenge for me to reproduce more than 8 shades of gray when 255 are theoretically possible).

Tweakie.

[Daven]

I did this on the 3020 - is it good enough or are you looking for a higher quality?

I used software that was free

Chester.jpg

(38.8 KiB) Downloaded 919 times

[Spooky]

In the "Tools" menu on lasercut Ali there is a function called half bitmap, select the picture and click that it will do all the conversion for you

best wishes

Dave

[Pedro_Hernandez]

I did this on the 3020 - is it good enough or are you looking for a higher quality?

I used software that was free

Chester.jpg

I agree the 3020 is capable of producing good photo engraving, nice work Dave ! ,
Just need to have a play and experiment, below are a few links to help.

Mod edit to fix links

Link 1

link 2

Link 3

Link 4


Regards

Pedro

[tweakie]

Hi Pedro,

I could only find one of your links valid

Tweakie.