Detailed Logos

[Brian Galea]

Hi All,
Trying to laser engrave a detailed logo onto a plaque made of plastic.

Have imported the file but cant seem to get all the detail/shades once engraved. Tried saving as bitmap, and greyscale but neither one looks pleasing to the eye.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Bruce Volden]

Brian,

Try posting the logo here if you can. Also, it would help to know the software you're using, and what type of machine you have. Could be something very simple like too much power, not enough speed etc, especially with plastics.

Bruce

[Dan Hintz]

Have you run a grayscale test block to make sure each shade of gray corresponds to a dither level that looks okay on the plastic? You will likely have to tweak the logo to match up with the test block.

[Bill Cunningham]

Also make sure the logo your trying to engrave is not a 75 dpi web image. I won't accept any bitmap under 150 dpi (for some items) but if it's a bitmap, 300 dpi is the norm. Mostly, because it's big enough to allow you to clean it up, or even retrace it to a vector file.

[Brian Galea]

Hey Guys,
Thanks for your replies.

I ended up using photoshop to distingush between shades. By that I mean made areas black/white. Customer was very happy with the end result.

Bruce, using corel X4 and have an Epilog mini 24.

Dan, can you explain what you mean by "grey scale test block"

Bill, definately had the bitmap set to 300 dpi.

Regards,
BG

[Dan Hintz]

Dan, can you explain what you mean by "grey scale test block"
Small blocks (1/4" or so) in the various shades of gray you intend to engrave at. Engrave the sample piece and see if the engraved "gray" value approximates what you see on the screen, especially each gray value compared to the others. Sometimes one value looks off compared to the others (may look too dark or too light), so the entire image looks off.

[Mike Null]

If you organize the small squares in 10% increments and run it using several substrates it'll give you a good idea of what to expect.

The palette in the photo is a good guide to use.

[Dan Hintz]

What Mike said... I have a 4x4 block of squares that I run with almost every new substrate type. I'll typically run it a couple of times as I zero in on the ideal setting. Save it as a separate file and keep it around for testing.

[Dee Gallo]

In addition to gradation tests, I have one test file I use for every substrate which has a photo and some type so I can compare results apples to apples. I keep the samples right there in my studio for referral along with my notebook of settings tried and results. Better to keep these than have surprises, and I keep adding to it all the time.

[Brian Galea]

Thanks for the replies.

Will do that and save them.