Raised grain on alder plaques

[Gregg Vaughn]

I have a problem that has shown up while engraving alder plaques. The wood surface directly around the engraved areas, when looked at closely, has what appears to be areas of grain that have "raised." You have to look very closely, but there is an issue.

I engraved these at 33 speed/100 pwr/300 dpi on my 45 watt Helix, a setting I have never had a problem with before.

These plaques are from JDS and I notice that they were made in Mexico rather than plaques I got from JDS in the past that came from CHINA.

Has anyone else seen this?

[Mike Null]

Gregg

I had the same thing occur the lst time I used alder. I concluded that I was using too much power and that slowing the speed and lowering the power will probably produce a better result.

As you know, you're tempted to use higher power to increase the contrast but I'm going to run the next job at 600 dpi and lower both speed and power to see if that won't get the job done.

I'm not a fan of alder but it was a customer choice.

[Phil Salvati]

Greg,

I haven't seen any grain raising here...and I use them quite a bit for low end plaques.

My settings are: 40P 75 Sp. 500 PPI Raster, 13P, 15 SP, 600 PPI Vector.