Problem engraving from Illustrator artwork

[Stephen Phipps]

I am new to laser engraving. I am trying to find out why I have a shadow effect in the backround when working with Illustrator. If I engrave similar artwork using Word I get a very clean backround. It seems as if the backround in the Illustrator fille contains something which the laser is trying to engrave.

Can anyone help?

[Doug Griffith]

That is odd. I only use Illustrator and have never had any problems (on my Epilog). What if you engrave the same file in both apps. Does the problem still exist? Try converting your color space to Grayscale in Illustrator. Worst case scenario, try rasterizing your vector in Illustrator and the engraving. Could be a driver issue.

[Dan Hintz]

Pics?.....

[Stephen Phipps]

Thanks for the help.

I will post pics with the problem and also try your suggestions.

[Scott Shepherd]

Also let us know what brand/model laser you're using so we can help.

[David Fairfield]

That is odd. I only use Illustrator and have never had any problems (on my Epilog). ... Could be a driver issue.


Ditto. No problems since the new driver came out a couple of years ago. Before that, feeding Illustrator files to the laser caused some erratic behavior. So it does sound like a driver problem.

[Stephen Phipps]

My laser is an Epilog 24 25 Watt. How do I insert a photo of the problem here?

[Dan Hintz]

When you hit the "Post reply" (not "quick reply"), there's a button near the bottom that allows you to attach images.

[Stephen Phipps]

Here are images of my problem. The product is a small bowling ball made from hard rubber which we use for 5 pin bowling here in Canada. As you can see the Illustrator image shows a shadow with the engraving. This shadow is made up of dots so it seems to me that the artwork must have these dots inluded evben though I cannot see them in Illustrator. The other image was created and printed using Word and gives a clean engraving.

[Stephen Phipps]

It seems the word image did not go through. Here it is again.

[Scott Shepherd]

What happens if you draw a rectangle behind it, filling it with pure white?

So a pure white fill rectangle with black text on top of it.

[Doug Griffith]

Interesting. What happens if you change the color space. Also convert text to outlines. Also rotate 90 degrees.

Are you using the latest driver?

When you look at the file as outlines and not preview, is the ghosted area enclosed by a vector outline?

[Chuck Stone]

my guess is that the text is on a colored background (almost white?)
but I don't know much about Illustrator or how it handles text..

[Dan Hintz]

Make sure your colorspace is RGB and not CMYK...

[Stephen Phipps]

Thanks for your help.

The image in Illustrator seems OK. The outline view is the same as the preview...no ghosts.

I took the driver from Epilogs website. I hope this is the right one.

I am going to keep playing with it. If you have any other ideas please let me know.

Thanks again.

[Dan Hintz]

Did you verify your colorspace?

[Stephen Phipps]

The document colur mode is set to RGB. Is their something else I can check to verify the colour space?

[Dan Hintz]

Check your histogram and make sure you only have one color spike right at complete black (0).

[Stephen Phipps]

I am still playing with this. So far the best solution I have is copy the artwork into a Word file and then print to the Epilog. This probably sounds crazy to anyone who has worked with laser engravers for some time. Hopefully some day it will sound crazy to me.

I have looked at my Illustrator program and cannot find a way to reaveal the histogram. How do you do this?

[Bob Tate]

There is no Histogram in Illustrator. Illustrator is a Vector program. Histogram's are for Raster.