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Tom Knight
02-11-2009, 9:37 AM
I am curious about grey scales and engraving. I know that engraving works with grey scales but are the tone ranges, guidlines or industry standards for this?

Thanks in advance...

Rodne Gold
02-11-2009, 10:28 AM
Short answer - there is no standard in terms of laser engraving greyscale

Every laser driver will handle greyscale conversion to halftones (essentially a laser is a 1 bit device) differently, various wattages and beam quality as well as material reactance to the laser, dot gain and so on will further determine how greyscale is done or what "standards" to use.
The best way to get consistent results is to use a program like the outrageously priced (IMHO) Photograv to do the conversion to 1 bit before you send it to the laser - it allows certain laser parameters to be input and provides a preview of expected results.
Other users have posted freeware methods of getting pretty much near photgrav results - search the board for "the gold method" , some photoshop and corel scripts are out there.

Tom Knight
02-11-2009, 10:59 AM
Short answer - there is no standard in terms of laser engraving greyscale

Every laser driver will handle greyscale conversion to halftones (essentially a laser is a 1 bit device) differently, various wattages and beam quality as well as material reactance to the laser, dot gain and so on will further determine how greyscale is done or what "standards" to use.
The best way to get consistent results is to use a program like the outrageously priced (IMHO) Photograv to do the conversion to 1 bit before you send it to the laser - it allows certain laser parameters to be input and provides a preview of expected results.
Other users have posted freeware methods of getting pretty much near photgrav results - search the board for "the gold method" , some photoshop and corel scripts are out there.

Thanks for the reply that makes things much clearer for me and that opens up allot of things I understand about 1bit in Corel and the other applications...