Engraved Ipad2

[Dean Fowell]

Well I just Laser engraved my IPad 2 and it's all good, for those who ask the power was 80 and 300 on a 80 watt laser. I did a vector etch and used cearmark

[Zlatan Vuckovic]

New guy still trying to learn the terms, but, what is the difference between vector etch and rastering?

[Andrea Weissenseel]

Dean, you know if there is no picture, it didn't happen :D

@zlatan

what is the difference between vector etch and rastering?

no difference, just different terms

[Dan Hintz]

The power was 80 and 300 on a 80 watt laser.
Dean, was this 80% power? What's the 300, mm/s?

I did a vector etch and used cearmark
Zlatan, Dean will have to give a final call on if this is what he meant, but you can engrave using vector paths rather than rastering the image (back and forth, top to bottom). This is ideal for line-based images.

[Mike Null]

Dan

That may be ideal for the simplest of images but not for anything complex and I question it for use with Cermark. The line is so fine that I think you risk blank spots.

[Zlatan Vuckovic]

Ok, so if you do a vector it travels along the line but if it raster the laser goes back and forth across the table. Does the line have to been thin, or will do a thicker line with multiple passes around? Thanks for the info, trying to soak it all in.

[Dan Hintz]

You can vector multiple times along the (nearly) same path to build up thickness of the line. You can also go out of focus to thicken up the line, bit if you're using Cermark you would need a really powerful machine... that trick works best with substrates like wood.

[Zlatan Vuckovic]

Thanks Dan. Was thinking of an outline of the Texas state on wood.

[Dan Hintz]

For that, it would be MUCH faster to take it a few notches out of focus and do a slow vector of the outline.

[Zlatan Vuckovic]

when you say take it out of focus, is that moving the table up or down? I set up preferances in driver for vector with power set, and sent to print, it showed up on the epilog display, as soon as i hit go, it beeped and said done but it never moved.

[Dan Hintz]

Doesn't matter... the beam is shaped like an hourglass, so a few notches up or down from the main focal point will end up the same.

[Dean Fowell]

Sorry all I'm back yes you are right the vector etch was ok did not come up as black as I would of liked, so I will engrave again when I get some me time.

[Tammy Larrabee]

I love the 'different laser brands, different ways of doing things' in these forums.
For my brand vectors (AI) cut, Bitmaps engrave, and the power/speed/PPI thing is different also. My power goes to 100%, speed goes to 1000 (don't ask why), and PPI is called scan gap and goes down to make a heavier DPI

[Bill Cunningham]

I love the 'different laser brands, different ways of doing things' in these forums.
For my brand vectors (AI) cut, Bitmaps engrave, and the power/speed/PPI thing is different also. My power goes to 100%, speed goes to 1000 (don't ask why), and PPI is called scan gap and goes down to make a heavier DPI

Vector images 'can' cut, or engrave the same as a bitmap! For simplicity sake, vector just refers to the makeup of the image. Images that are made up of filled vectors and lines, can be made any size you wish, without the dreaded 'jaggies' you get with a bit image, and can be engraved exactly the same way. HairLine vectors around the edges of a image vector are usually put there as a final cut-out path. Sometimes they are inadvertantly hidden 'in' the image and will cut if they are hairlines. Sometimes you can reduce a logo vector image created in .ai or ,cdr to a size so small that all the visible lines become hairlines, and will cut instead of engrave or if set for raster, they will be ignored by the driver.. New laser users are often confused by what vector images are, or can do. It's just hairline vectors that cut, all other parts of a vector image will engrave the same as a bitmap..