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Gary Noble 6363
03-26-2011, 3:12 PM
Hi all,

First of all let me introduce myself. My name is Gary and I run a trophy and engraving business in Derbyshire England, I have owned the business for the last 7 years.

Up until 3 weeks ago I had always used either a diamond drag rotary or sand blast to engrave my customers items, I have now just purchased a LS6840 60W laser machine to enable me to move my business onto the next stage so to speak. One of the main things I am wanting to do with it is to engrave photographs onto items (Not glass as I sand blast for this).

I purchased the Photograv software and have installed it but for some reason I appear to be getting different results with it. If I use photograv and then insert the photo into an object using corel x4 I seem to get a wash-out effect with the engraving yet if I leave the photo out of an object it seems to engrave ok. Does anyone know of a way around this or should I be inserting the photo into an object BEFORE sending it to photograv?

Looking forward to your replies.

Kindest regards and a big hello to you all :)

Gary

Dan Hintz
03-26-2011, 3:31 PM
Pics help here...

Frank Corker
03-26-2011, 3:53 PM
Gary - 'insert it into an object' - make your photograph the same size as the object, send it to photograv. Import it into Corel (without resizing or rotating) and then insert it into the object, doing it the other way around might alter the digitising. Altering an image in Corel generally lowers the dpi setting - it's a fault. Photograv 3.0 is an excellent means of digitising an image for engraving, but I have consistently found that their settings are very much 'pie in the sky'. In photograv, select the material and process it in the normal way, when it comes to the engraving, if you are having washed out problems I would check the given photograv settings against your machine manual settings. If they differ dramatically then I would lean towards your laser manual settings.

'Washed out' can be two things. A washed out image is generally either too much power which obliterates the workpiece ( this will be obvious by deep grooves ), or the washed out has not been sufficient power (this will be obvious by the lack of marks on the workpiece). A photo of the problem would help everyone here to help you as it shows much more than you would be able to describe.

Larry Bratton
03-26-2011, 5:41 PM
My two cents worth here..Don't use those settings that PG spits out. Use the manual settings. I have Epilog and for example on granite, I use 38-40p x 100s at 300dpi, dithered using Floyd Steinburg (which I don't do in PG). PG settings are far from that. Most other things the Cherry settings are recommended by most everyone here.

lucas kreft
03-26-2011, 5:55 PM
you may want to adjust the levels of the image. create a white to black gradient print it then etch the gradient so you can see what colours etch and what doesnt.
download these settings too..
http://www.photograv.com/pgdownloads.htm