Distorted image quality/Dots outside engraving area

[Bryan Puls]

I have a Hurricane Laser Ivan 80W and am getting small "dots" or edge distortion when engraving on to black laserable aluminum used for plaques. I have changed speed and power settings, switched lenses, changed scan gap, checked for loose or moving parts or material, cleaned mirrors and lenses, checked focus, tried engraving without "bi-directional" on, made sure the laser is on a dedicated circuit, and called Hurricane. Everyone I talk to is stumped. Has anyone ever seen this before or had this problem? I need this laser to be operational asap. Check out the attachments and tell me what you think. Please!!!

[walter hofmann]

hi
did you use a picture version? it looks like this was coming from a picture cut out and the cut out was not cleaned up enough.
with picture its better to use a trace program.
greetings
waltfl

[Dan Hintz]

I'm with Walter... it looks like someone took a poorly scanned image and converted it to B&W (1-bit) before cleaning up around the text. Guaranteed to leave dots all over the place. Notice how they're heaviest when two letters get close to each other, like in the second picture (P and l)?

[Glen Monaghan]

I'll third that notion. Depending on your settings, the stray dots that are so obvious in the engraving may be nearly invisible in the file. You can try reducing colors to eliminate, or use a graphics program's color replacement tool to replace colors using a bit of tolerance on the RGB or brightness values, knocking the entire background to white (or whatever the rest of the background is).

[Real Mercier]

I agree it is a poorly scanned image. We can't see the rest of the file, If it is only text, I would retype the text and use the image for sizing and placement. Once done blow away the image and you have an ultra clean file. Might take less time than trying to clean the image or run trace. Just a thought.

Real Mercier

[AL Ursich]

Type some text and do the same.... See the results... Artwork or Machine.... :) Half Splitting.... I agree a scanned jpg.... or something low quality.