Color Profiles for Variations in Engraving Powers

[Jeff Heinrichs]

I'm having no luck in getting a job from Corel to Trotec's JobControl that has multiple colors for different engraving settings.

The reason I need to do this is that I'm engraving on 4" tennis balls. The text needs more power and slower speed than the logo. If I run the job with the typical "black" only engraving setting the logo is fine and the text too light, or the text will be fine and the logo too burned away. For that reason I was trying to get the logo to engrave at a lower power/higher speed and the text at a higher power/lower speed by using the color profiles in JobControl.

I've verified the colors are RGB and in the Trotec color library. I do use color profiles frequently in vector jobs to cut out certain areas before others, so I am familiar with using multiple colors to change the order of operations, but I haven't used multiple colors for variations in engraving settings.

Anyone have advice or what I could try to get this to work. Thanks in advance.

[Scott Shepherd]

Hi Jeff, what's it not doing? You mentioned you are using RGB colors in the Trotec library. Are you using the Trotec Color Palette to select colors?

[Jeff Heinrichs]

Scott, no I am not using the specific Trotec Color Palette (I've seen you mention it in other posts, but have not ever learned how to employ it yet), but the logo I changed to RGB (0,255,0) for green as I have done for other jobs and had no issues. That's why I wanted to make sure I clarified in my initial post that I am familiar with using the color settings for my laser jobs, albeit in vector cutting jobs not engraving jobs.

So when I create this logo below in CorelDraw. When I send it to JobControl it says it will engrave the black (0,0,0) and it will take x.xx minutes, it will show the green (0,255,0) and say it will engrave for 0.00 minutes, meaning that it isn't recognizing the green.

I did verify the RGB values and in the print preferences told the Trotec to engrave the green at 45% power and 80% speed, but it does recognize the black at 65% power, 90% speed

LaserLogo-wColor.jpg

[Scott Shepherd]

I would suspect that's related to the color issue. Why it works on vector and not raster, I'm not sure, but to troubleshoot, I'd be using the Trotec color palette, no matter what. Then you'll know 100% whether it's color related or not.

[Jeff Heinrichs]

Can you tell me how to install/access the Trotec color palette? I took a cursory look in CorelDraw when changing colors, but didn't see Trotec palette as an option.

[Scott Shepherd]

Can you tell me how to install/access the Trotec color palette? I took a cursory look in CorelDraw when changing colors, but didn't see Trotec palette as an option.

PM me your email address and I'll email you the palette.

[Gary Hair]

If you hover your cursor over the color in the material template you can see the RGB values you need to use, there really isn't any need to use the Trotec palette if you know the RGB values. When you are selecting the preferences for the job in the printer driver "Preferences" tab, do you have "Color" selected in the "Halftones" dropdown? Your description of the estimated time tells me you don't.

Scott, no I am not using the specific Trotec Color Palette (I've seen you mention it in other posts, but have not ever learned how to employ it yet), but the logo I changed to RGB (0,255,0) for green as I have done for other jobs and had no issues. That's why I wanted to make sure I clarified in my initial post that I am familiar with using the color settings for my laser jobs, albeit in vector cutting jobs not engraving jobs.

So when I create this logo below in CorelDraw. When I send it to JobControl it says it will engrave the black (0,0,0) and it will take x.xx minutes, it will show the green (0,255,0) and say it will engrave for 0.00 minutes, meaning that it isn't recognizing the green.

I did verify the RGB values and in the print preferences told the Trotec to engrave the green at 45% power and 80% speed, but it does recognize the black at 65% power, 90% speed

LaserLogo-wColor.jpg

[Jeff Heinrichs]

Hey Steve,

Thanks for the .xml and this did get me closer, but has also raised more questions.

Attached you'll see the screenshot (CorelDrawSS.jpg) of my CD screen. The Trotec palette on the right, but notice the color value at the bottom, CMYK? thought that was curious. I continued on anyway.
CorelDrawSS.jpg


In JCX I saw something I hadn't seen before, see the attached JCX-1.jpg file. Now there was a time for the green color.
JCX-1.jpg


I looked at the material database to make sure my settings were correct for what I wanted on the output (JCX-2.jpg), so I thought "Awesome this fixed it!"
JCX-2.jpg


Ran the job and the attached JobResult1.jpg was the result. It showed time for the green, but the output didn't laser the green color. Odd especially given the fact JCX showed the calculated time for the color.
JobResult1.jpg


My questions:

- Why does CorelDraw show CMYK as the color of the boxer, even though I chose the green from the Trotec color palette?
- How could JCX interpret the job and assign time for the color green (obviously accepting everything given to it from CorelDraw) and still not engrave the output.

CorelDraw File added here:
ColorSeperationSettings.cdr


Any ideas appreciated.

[Scott Shepherd]

Do you have color management turned off, like I emailed? If not, try that. Also, make it a different color than green. Try light blue from the palette. I'm not at work so I can't open the file. I'll stop by work tomorrow after lunch if you don't solve it by then. Try the color management setting and try a different color for green and let us know here. I'll check back here tonight.

[Jeff Heinrichs]

I initially didn't see it, but messing around I found it under a drop down list.

CR-SimulateColorManagement.jpg

After turning off color management I changed the logo color to cyan and "cyan" now appears on the bottom status bar of CorelDraw

CorelDrawSS-2.jpg

In JobControl everything looked appropriate, cyan was showing time to engrave settings on the left, the material database was changed from green to cyan with the appropriate speed and power settings. I ran the job and the output was the same as the first results above. Everything but the cyan dog logo was engraved.

Don't worry about rushing to solve this over a July 4th holiday on my account. This can definitely wait for tinker time some other day. I'm going to continue working on it tonight, because I want to play around with the Trotec palette some more, so I get more comfortable with how it replaces manually choosing colors.

[Jeff Heinrichs]

Gary - Sorry I got distracted working through Steve's inputs.

Yes, I got intimately familiar the material template and the assigned colors when I did a layered Crater Lake relief map. I used every color from the 16 available to create that project.

CraterLakeLayers.jpg CraterLakeProject.jpg

Doing color separations for that project wasn't a problem for me when it came to cutting out the layers, but everything I've tried so far on the engraving side has escaped me as to why I can't get it figured out.

I did verify that color is selected for the "half-tone" setting. I found that through my trial and error as well.

[Scott Shepherd]

Hi Jeff. Good feedback. It's something simple we are missing. Can you take a screenshot of the mode area (just below the material selection area). If you can just screenshot that whole screen.

We will figure it out. I do think it's something simple. Just need to be able to see it all from start to JCX and we will get it.

[Jeff Heinrichs]

Part of this is that I'm barely a student of CorelDraw, my experience with it is merely a few months old at this point, so everything I learn about it is new. I definitely have been leveraging the knowledge others have shared with regards to it's many nuances.

After doing everything above I noted the following when I select my logo and double click on the "cyan" at the bottom of the CorelDraw screen I get the following "Edit Fill" popup.

ObjectEditFill.jpg

What I'm curious about is initially after everything above was tried the pull down at the top right had "CMYK" selected. One thing I've learned in the last few months is that CMYK is your enemy in the Laser world, so seeing that alarmed me. I changed it to RGB and then I also noticed "Document Palette" shown, so I changed it to the Trotec palette. I exit and go back to this edit fill screen "Document Palette" is shown again and not the Trotec palette. Every time I change it to the Trotec palette, it changes back.

Not being a CorelDraw veteran I have no idea if these settings have impacts over other settings, etc. After changing the edit fill settings just mentioned I ran the job and still no logo engraved.

Give me a little more guidance on the screen shot of the "mode area" do you mean the material database window which also shows all the possible material selections?
MaterialSelection.jpg

[Scott Shepherd]

The page where you see things like "minimize to job", then the DPI, and Mode (photo, color,b/w). That whole page of settings if you can.

[Jeff Heinrichs]

No problem, here it is:

TrotecPrintProperties.jpg