Acrylic Photo Engraving

[Shane McGinley]

I first want to start out by saying hello as this is my first forum post. My name is Shane McGinley and I recently got into laser engraving about 8 months ago. We purchased a Universal 3.50 Desktop laser engraver as we're finally learning how to use this machine in and out.

We do a lot of acrylic engraving and had a question in regards to lasering photos. We recently purchased the Universal 1-Touch Laser Photo software and have seen mixed results. We have tried dozens of samples, all which produce different results. It seems the power/speed must be perfect or the photo will get washed out (either too dark or too light). For those of you who engrave photos on acrylic, what settings worked best for you? (power/speed, halftone, error diffusion, black and white). Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!

Shane

[Frank Corker]

Shane I don't have the Universal and I have only heard about the 1 touch (which was favourable). A lot does depend on your photo when it gets processed, you need to have a picture with a good consistency throughout to get a great result, but somewhere along the line, there will be similarities between all of the images to get an approximate power setting for you. Scott (real name Steve) Shepard has a pretty good grip on the situation and I believe he has tried the 1 touch program that you have. Processing for an average image at 250dpi (that's what shows up for Universal 3.50 35w in Photograv 3.0) a recommended speed setting of 48% power to 100% speed. Whether or not that is of any use I am not too sure, but your handbook should be giving you some indication of an 'average' picture. There should also be presets saved in Universal's printer driver that would direct you to their recommended settings. Failing those two, a visit to their website showed (on the last occasion I looked) a good number of recommendations to get a good result.

Also... for images on clear acrylic, you need to have your images in negative to see the result.

[Shane McGinley]

Frank,

Thank you for your response. We have been getting horizontal lines in only some pictures (not all) that could be caused by power fluctuations (maybe something different?) I will have to just continue the trial and error process for the time being.