photo lasering on black marble

[Sylvie Nadeau]

I have a 80 watts laser engraver and I would like to know what power and speed I should use to engrave a photo. I use PhotoGrav to get my photo ready.

[George Bowers]

I have a 30 watt laser and never go higher than 25% power. If the image has large areas of white I go with 20%. The real trick is the focus - if your laser dot burns to wide it will wash out your entire image, especially if using a higher DPI. I find using lower DPI's [below 400] work better. And I recommend working to size. If you take a 5 x 7 image at 400 DPI, the image you take into photograve should be 5 x 7 at 400 DPI before filtering image in photograve. I believe in WYSIWYG rather than using filters that may be built into your laser.

Hope this helps.
George Bowers

[Myk Rian]

Wrong area fellas.

[Tim Bateson]

Experiment. Not all black marble lasers the same & to that note - some "black marble" isn't marble at all. A good black marble will laser white. If you get nothing more than a dull gray it isn't real marble, likely granite.


Adding your machine info to your signature line would likely get you many more answers.