Curiosity Question??

[Chad Fitzgerald]

Ive noticed a few times now the mention of using 90% or 80% black in corel in order to get a better result on an engraving. My question is how is that different from setting the power to 80% or 90%??
Just curious.
Thanks Chad

[Rodne Gold]

The greyscale will result in engraving in a dither pattern , IE like a newpaper print where the image is composed of differently spaced and sized dots. Doing things this way often results in less dot overlap and heat affected zone that would happen with a solid black fill and thus it is often kinder to the material being engraved as there is less heat put into it.

[Chad Fitzgerald]

that makes sense. thanks alot.
chad

[Jeff Belany]

I know that using 80% on glass is one of the best things I ever learned on this forum. Really improves the look of engraving on glass.

Jeff in northern Wisconsin

[Vicki Rivrud]

The greyscale will result in engraving in a dither pattern , IE like a newpaper print where the image is composed of differently spaced and sized dots. Doing things this way often results in less dot overlap and heat affected zone that would happen with a solid black fill and thus it is often kinder to the material being engraved as there is less heat put into it.

So for those of us who use Chinese lasers - are you saying to choice the colorfill as 80% then save as a bmp and then the dither pattern will be better than the solid black?

Lasercut only reads black and white - not greyscale but I think I understand that the dither pattern will creat more white within the dither . . . or do I have it wrong??

Vicki

[Rodne Gold]

All lasers essentially only recognise black or white (on or off). The software/driver might do the dithering unseen internally directly from the vector drawing , or as you intimate , you might have to import it into the driver as a bmp.

The dithered pattern is not always best , it depends on how the material handles heat , the spot size and its overlap , what you want to achieve etc.

For eg , if you were engraving on wood and you wanted depth and weren't worried about how the fired dots would overlap , and the relative "roughness" of the exposed surface after engraving a solid chunk isn't a problem , then there is no point in using a greyscale fill.
If you are , for example , engraving rowmark laminate and the heat of overlapping dots would most likely warp the material , and all you want to do is just pierce the cap to expose the subsurface and depth is not an issue , then a greyscale fill might be a lot better.