3d Engraving - is it worth it? Do you use it?

[Shane Silcox]

I have been shopping for a laser for a while now. I am down to a Laserpro or an Epilog. I sure do like the possibilities that the Laserpro provides via opening the front and back doors for larger products.

The particular thing I was wondering about was Laserpro's claims of how great their 3D driver is. Can you do similar things with an Epilog? Does it work as well as advertised? Those with Laserpros /Pinnacle - do you actually use the 3d portion of the driver?

I just want to say that I felt lost with so many laser manufacturers, dealers, options, etc until I found this site. Thanks for all of your expert advice. Quite the valuable resource, this website!

[Carol VanArnam]

Great thread... I was wondering the same question. Is it worth buying the 3d files? I've got an Epilog Helix 60w laser. I've seen 3d laser items and they look cool.

CAN ANYONE POST A 3D COREL FILE? I'd like to try and laser something and see how difficult it is. :o :o

[Bill Cunningham]

I maybe wrong.. (god knows I've been wrong 'once' before :D) But I think the laserpro driver will vary the power based on the desity of the greyscale.. The darker the tone the deeper it goes.. To tell the truth, I've never tried plain grayscales on my epilog (other than into marble which gives fantastic results) I usually process my photos with Corel paint, or photograv, into 2bit files.. Depending on the material..

[Dave Jones]

Yes the Epilogs do the same thing. At least I know the newer ones do. Mine is a Mini-24 and it has it. In the Advanced tab of the driver you select "3D mode" and it varies the laser power based on the shade of gray.

I've tried it and it is pretty cool. But it is not easy to create the images to use for it. I can create 3D models in LightWave-3D and then render them using the depth buffer so that the shades of gray change with the distance from the "camera". That makes the parts of the object that are closer to the virtual camera come out white, and those in the distance are black (with shades of gray between).

The laser power is not linear, so there is much more depth difference between the lighter shades than there is from shade to shade in the darker shades. This can be compensated for to some degree in Photoshop or Corel PhotoPaint using curves.

A regular photo does not give 3D results that you would expect, since shadows engrave deep and highlights don't. This means a photo of a face doesn't engrave in 3D in the shape of a face. It engraves based on the highlights and shadows. A typical portrait will have half the face caved in because of the shadows.

So, yes it's possible. But creating the images can be complex.

[Rodne Gold]

Its a bells and whistles thing that does work well , however in 6 + years of lasering using laserpros , I have never used it apart from experimentation.
I wouldnt let it influence your buying decision.

[Shane Silcox]

That helps a lot. Thanks guys. I'll post back when I receive my new laser :)

[Aaron Koehl]

Right on-- a neat feature, but really tough to find a market for beyond the 'cool' factor.

[Mike Mackenzie]

You can easily create 3d effects using corel. All you need to do is to use the contour effect.

Try this draw a circle go to the contour and contour to the center use the color from black to white and set the offset to 0.001. Once you do this you will have a grey looking dome circle, Now break the contour group apart and go to effects and adjust and Gamma. By adjusting the gamma you can create a shallow dome or a deep dome More black means deeper less means shallower.

Now the last thing to do once you have made adjustments is to export it as a bitmap. These contour files are very large so to work with them once they are finished it is easier to have them in a bitmap format.

Working with complex vector drawings is time consuming and requires a huge amount of computer memory but you can do some really nice things with it.

Also last note do not try to engrave any 3D files in one pass use several lighter passes so the material won't burn. There are easier ways to create 3d files but the software is expensive this is the easy way using your existing software.

[Richard Rumancik]

I received a few 3D files from GCC several years back. A file suitable for 3D engraving has a "unique" look to it. I don't think that most users would be able to create one very easily using Corel PhotoPaint unless the image was quite simple. Creating the shading necessary to get the appropriate depth is very difficult and is much different than photo engraving. I have a few sample files they sent me. I resampled the attached "horse" file from 500 to 250 dpi to make it small enough to attach.

If anyone wants to experiment with 3D let me know and I can send you a couple files.

As far as practicality - I agree with the others. It is a cute feature but I don't know how much you would use it, expecially when you would have difficulty making your own artwork. I made a Chevy logo from scratch - it was mostly 2.5 D but had a textured (3D) background behind the raised text. It worked, but even this simple file took quite a bit of effort.

GCC recommended a 2-pass system on wood, using the 3D file then going over the whole artwork with a high-speed black fill layer to clean up the image. In reality, to get much depth, I think you would have to do multiple passes to get depth without burning. Then focusing comes into play. For my Chevy logo (in acrylic) I used a few "roughing passes" to make the letters relieved; then I refocused and did a 3D pass to create the textured background. Quite a bit of work with limited market potential.

[Richard Rumancik]

Recently I found some more info on 3D engraving on the Kern Electronics website.

www.kernlasers.com/3d_laser_engraving.htm (http://www.kernlasers.com/3d_laser_engraving.htm)

I know a lot of members were not that enthusiastic about 3D engraving but it does look good for some applications.

There is a link on the Kern page to



www.gantryco.com/ (http://www.gantryco.com/)

This is a company that makes 3D greyscale artwork for laser (and CNC routing.) You can purchase the files although they are not inexpensive. ( $75-$250.) You would probably need to use the graphic more than once to justify the expense. However, trying to shade your own artwork would obviously be time consuming. They have a sample you can download.

Some more interesting info here on the process. . .

www.gantryco.com/GantryLaserCarving/LaserEngraving3Dii.html (http://www.gantryco.com/GantryLaserCarving/LaserEngraving3Dii.html)

[Chris Costello]

Yes, the epilog mini's will do 3D, and I was in your same position a few months ago. I liked the idea of the side doors on the Laserpro. But I found a slightly used epilog mini 24, 45 Watt at a good price, and I bought it. A couple months after the purchase, my motherboard shorted out (most likely from an ungrounded exhaust hose I think now) I called epilog, they diagnosed the problem, and sent me a new mother board free of charge, and gave me a one year warranty on my machine. I don't know how laserpro backs their machines, but Epilog's support couldn't have been better. I can't see myself ever buying another laser from anyone else.
My two cents. Hope it helps.

Chris Costello
Epilog Mini 24, 45W CD12

[Vicky Orsini]

I agree that service should be a huge deciding factor in a laser purchase. I've only ever used the 3-D capability during "play time", although I'm very glad I have it in case I ever need it. Like the pass-through doors. I've only had to use them a couple of times, but those couple of times I was very glad they were there.

In the short time I've had my LaserPro, I've received fantastic support from both my local rep and the 'warehouse' in California.

[Tom Majewski]

I have a Pinnacle and the 3D driver impressed me. I did some photos on basswood and poplar and they came out great. All I did was convert to gray, and adjust contrast and midtones. I'd like to try it on something like corian that has a more homogeneous texture to make small medalians - similar to minted coins.

[Kim Vellore]

3D engraving is very useful, atleast for me. Here is a link of what I could do with rastering 3D.
http://kimsartshop.com/Corrugated_Gondola.html

You cannot get these details as good as these even with a good RP machine.
I recently started to use this feature and will be building more 3D things soon.

To do a 3d is simple just draw a circle and colour fill it radially center white and edge black. I dont have Corel with me at work but it is all in one docker.
When you laser it you will get a bump. To do a complete drawing in grey shades is very time consuming and not so easy, I am also looking for other software that can do it.

Kim

[Joseph Shawa]

I've been preparing to do some 3D engraving of topographical maps and am working with CorelDraw to set the depths.
Rather than using grey scale and exporting to a B&W image I am separating the contour lines by color. In my case the originals have 256 actual colors but by doing several manipulations I make each color a vector object keeping the details in each contour and export to a .dxf file with 16-25 colors. I then assign each color to a power setting and engrave each separately. Just got a new head so I haven't tried engraving this yet but the goal is to get finely stepped contour lines rather than pure 3D.

[Kev Williams]

Just a thought here, but rather than giving separate, mapped contours different power settings, why not just number and color them as to their depths- 1 the deepest, 15 (or so) the shallowest. Color each countour differently, and line them all up in order in the software's color map. Give them ALL the same power and speed settings, which you'll need to determine ;) --

then just do this: engrave color 1... then engrave color 1 + color 2... then engrave 1 + 2 + 3... then 1 + 2 + 3 + 4... etc etc...

I tried this once for 4 colors, MY headache was in separating the 4 colors :) -- but it worked. Once you get the speed and power dialed in so each cut depth is how you want it, should work...

[Robert Bonenfant]

Like others have said 3d engraving is more of a cool factor, We used it once when we first tested our machines and never used it again. It really just takes to long to complete to make it remotely profitable. If your looking to make 3d engravings than a cnc router would be the way to go - alot faster and the programs out there make it pretty simple to do. My routers will run circles around my lasers when it comes to 3d engraving.

[Joseph Shawa]

Thanks Kev,

What I am trying to do is do max resolution depth engraving of the contours to accurate scale. The details I am getting are great but as you stated, separating the depths is tricky. As for the powers they seem to be non linear so I adjust both the speed and power to get each level to do what I want it to. Also each level is grey scale in order to maintain detail. i.e. it's not just a solid, flat engrave. Right now I am trying to simplify by getting accurate data from USGS because even though the method is working it is Verry time consuming. The reason being that the data is displayed in JPG format or PDF and contour lines that may have been intended to be of one color are condensed and result in darker, which means deeper and aren't accurate. What I do then is color the questionable areas to match the depth adjacent to them.....one after another after another!

So, I will get back to the thread as I simplify it.

[Joseph Shawa]

What kind of detail can you get?

[Bert Kemp]

This is a 3d I did to see how it worked. details ok but could be better367473

[Bill George]

Looks nice Bert. So what you really need is some sort of program that assigns depth to a shade in a gray scale image.

[Bert Kemp]

Probably right Bill but don't think I'll be doing anymore 3d this is a 12 x 12" and took over 4 hours to do. Just wanted to try it and see what happens, now I know LOL