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View Full Version : Trotec: cutting at one PPI and Etching at Another. Is this possible?



John Breznicky
04-06-2014, 9:02 PM
Hey Guys!

I'm on day 4 with my speedy 400, and man am I impressed! What a treat! I've been dialing in settings but have noticed that I can only seem to cut vector paths at 500ppi. We often etch coaster sets with that are heavily graphical designs that often come our own or other designers screen printed artwork with many halftones and patterns, so I can easily achieve a desired etch quality with 333ppi settings and floyd steinburg dithering. Problem is when I send the artwork to job control at 333ppi it reads my red cut lines as black etch lines, when I send the identical artwork at 500ppi everything etches and cuts seamlessly as it should. I'm wondering if there is any way to send a job to job control that etches at 333ppi and cuts at 500ppi, since these are separate tasks I don't see how this can't be an option. As a temporary solution I have been sending as two separate jobs, the etch at 333 first and the cut at 500 after. Any advice from those who have been using job control longer than I have would be greatly appreciated!

Scott Shepherd
04-07-2014, 9:08 AM
John, can you tell us more about the settings? Are you sending it over as "Standard" or "Photo Optimized" or something else? When I send jobs over at 333 or 500, using Standard and Photo Optimized, both sent the red lines over as cut lines and the black over as engraving. However, I didn't actually run them to see if they were rastering the red lines or not, but they appeared and disappeared when I turned the red on and off in the material setting, so that's fairly normal behavior, making me think it's working correctly.

Can you take a screen shot and post it of the settings you are using when sending it over? I'm not able to duplicate your issue.

Morris Mac
04-08-2014, 10:56 AM
Hello,
when you engrave laser is pulsating and therefore you choose pulses per inches, when you cut you choose frequency your laser is raising and falling like a current, so when you select a cut process based on the material you can choose starting with 1000 HZ. Remember your cut line has to be RGB hairline thickness 0.003 inches. Your print driver is seeing a thicker line it will process as an engraving line, most important art work has to be RGB, if you are using CMYK you might have bad results.