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sharon moore
08-19-2013, 6:08 AM
Hi, We recently bought a Gravograph 35watt 100ES Laser and are trying to produce photos onto various materials, especially anodised aluminium. We cannot seem to perfect this and were wondering, could any of you guys provide any tips or suggestions. We have tried editing the photos through various types of software enhancing programmes, but, just cant get it right. The quality is nearly there, on using 1 touch photo software, but the clarity isn't coming out the way it should, whether this is down to the settings we are using or something else, we just don't know. Can anyone please help. We are based in Belfast, Northern Ireland and any help would be most appreciated. Many thanks. Sharon

Mike Null
08-19-2013, 6:45 AM
Sometimes people want to use high power and high resolution on anodized aluminum thinking it will produce the best results. What it does is "blow out" detail. Try lowering power and resolution.

sharon moore
08-19-2013, 7:50 AM
Thanks Mike - we'll try that.

Dan Hintz
08-19-2013, 7:58 AM
To further Mike's comment... you should be around 50P/100S for aluminum. Try increments of 2 up to +/- 10P until you get something that looks good. You want to bleach the anodizing die, not blast away the anodized layer.

Brian R Cain
08-19-2013, 8:15 AM
Think about the size of the focussed spot your lens is producing and the resolution you are engraving at. Engraving photographs is a bit different to other engraving jobs as it involves getting as much detail into the image as possible. The standard 2.0" lens will have a spot size of around 0.005" so to get the greatest clarity, you need to set a resolution that matches this. A higher resolution means that you will be etching over previous detail.

Think of it like this. If you engrave at 1,000 DPI, each line is 0.001" apart. You might think that this will give you the highest resolution, but if your spot is 0.005", it covers five of the lines.

For best results, use a shorter focal length lens which will have a smaller spot size and allow you to set a higher engraving resolution.

The 1 touch software is great, and gives some of the best results I've seen, but don't forget that the images the dealers show you have been carefully selected and enhanced in Photoshop to optimise the results.

Rich Kruyer
08-19-2013, 8:22 AM
What res. do you recommend? Is 600 DPI to much for wood and alum?

Brian R Cain
08-19-2013, 8:42 AM
What res. do you recommend? Is 600 DPI to much for wood and alum?
It depends on the lens you use. I've engraved some stunning photographs using Universal's HPDFO. This gives a focussed spot of around 0.001" so I can run the machine at its highest resolution adding unique detail into each line.

Scott Shepherd
08-19-2013, 9:00 AM
What res. do you recommend? Is 600 DPI to much for wood and alum?

As a general rule, that's way too many DPI for those materials. The High Definition Optics Brian speaks of is the exception to the rule.

Dan Hintz
08-19-2013, 11:48 AM
What res. do you recommend? Is 600 DPI to much for wood and alum?

I'm usually in the 300-333dpi range for marble, 250(ish) for wood, and 500-600 for anodized aluminum.

Mike Null
08-19-2013, 12:30 PM
Mine are the reverse of Dan's for wood and anodized though for text I will run anodized at 500 dpi.

Isaac Clarke
08-19-2013, 1:12 PM
I generally use 150dpi on glass and mirror and it comes out with good results if you edit the image properly.
268855

Martin Boekers
08-19-2013, 1:13 PM
Anodized images can look great, but as you see even here different folks use different settings. It will Take some experimenting to get it just right. Rodne Gold develop a method for converting images (search here "Gold method" also Roy Brewer has a Great YouTube vide on on this. YouTube is a great resource so I recommend spending time there. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yllZTBA0HO0

Chuck Stone
08-19-2013, 1:20 PM
If I run anything higher than 200dpi, I just get a deeper burn, not more detail.
200 is about the max resolution of my lens, although the laser will go to 1000.
(deeper because the overlapping lines are burned more than once) So I take
that into account, and usually run at 300dpi for things other than wood.

sharon moore
08-19-2013, 4:32 PM
268866Hi, this is the latest engraving we have completed. 35Watt Gravograph 100ES using 57%P 100%S and a dpi of 300. Can you suggest any tips.

Isaac Clarke
08-19-2013, 4:43 PM
I would lower the DPI and power. I'm not sure how the gravo software works but can you change the method of dithering? What material is this?

Also, edit the photo before hand. In Photoshop go over the skin folds, around eyes etc with the burn tool and touch of the whites of the eyes, tip of nose and forehead with the dodge tool :)

sharon moore
08-19-2013, 5:10 PM
Hi Isaac, we will run the photo through with different dithering effects and see if that improves things. We put the image through 1 touch photo editing, which is supposed to automatically calculate everything, but this was the best engraving we got from using this software. The material is anodised aluminium.

Isaac Clarke
08-19-2013, 6:28 PM
Can you run images through that are predithered? If so send me the file and I'll edit it in PS :)

Kevin Cederquist
08-19-2013, 6:37 PM
Not to question ability, but just sort of a dumb check. Is the image big enough for what you're engraving? And in 1-touch are you specifying the actual size of the engraving, and not selecting a size, then resizing it in corel draw or illustrator before you engrave it? That can have a significant effect.

Chuck Stone
08-19-2013, 7:24 PM
Not to question ability, but just sort of a dumb check. Is the image big enough for what you're engraving? And in 1-touch are you specifying the actual size of the engraving, and not selecting a size, then resizing it in corel draw or illustrator before you engrave it? That can have a significant effect.

Absolutely. At 300dpi, you shouldn't see dots.. they should be too small unless you get right up
on the engraving. But at normal viewing distance you shouldn't see them.

The image should be final size BEFORE you do any processing. But if you're starting out with
a small image, then GIGO applies.

Ross Moshinsky
08-19-2013, 7:27 PM
I have a similar engraver. The following settings are just for photos

Power: 30-50
Speed: 100
DPI: 300

I have an older version of Gravostyle but I always thought it did a horrible job of processing photos. I use the Gold Method plugin with Photoshop and the results are 1000% better. I also tried out a demo of Universal's 1-Touch processing program and thought the results were very good as well. I don't do photos enough to purchase the 1-Touch software but if I did, I'd probably buy it just for the ease of use. Right out of the box I found the results acceptable without any real tweaking.

Vladimir Suvorin
08-19-2013, 11:32 PM
I engrave images on various metals often and from my experience Jarvis or Stucky dithering method gives good results.

William Wong
08-28-2013, 3:03 AM
these photos are newly made on acrylic269489269490269491