Lisa Walter
10-25-2007, 12:36 PM
Hello! My name is Lisa Burger. I bought an Epilog Legend 36 EXT. It arrived about 6 weeks ago. I have been spending my time practicing while I wait for the electric company to come and hook up the electric (what a joke) to a building I put on my property to house the laser and run my business out of. While I am waiting on them, I signed up for a few local craft shows coming up to help get my name out there. I am located in Northeastern PA. I chose the Epliog because of the great feedback I had read about them, and because they are close by (within three hours of me). When the laser salesman was here training me, he said my laser burned hotter than a 30 watt. He said more like a 35 watt. I assume this is normal? I just have to remember to keep that in mind when choosing settings for certain materials.
I have already been having some problems (no surprise right? haha!). Most materials have been going great for me, but the past week I have been having trouble with burning images on black marble. I have read many many postings on here to help me out and tried a few ideas (and perfectly written steps) that did not work for me. They made things better than what they were, but my images still aren't the best. For instance, a good male friend of mine is turning 40 this Saturday. I wanted to make him a personalized gift that he would love. His wife gave me a picture of him sitting on his grandfather's favorite tractor that he restored himself (he belongs to an antique tractor club). I bought the Photograv software that cost me an arm and a leg. The software arrived with a letter that there are some new parameters that are included on the cd but not loaded in the software and I can load them myself. So I loaded the parameters but they don't show up under the choice of product menu. If I look at the details of the product I am getting ready to burn it shows up under there. I have to be honest. For over $400 for this software I expected a lot better out of it. It looks very basic. I am just learning it so I can't make a judgement yet on if it works very basic. So anyway, I adjusted my tractor image BEFORE I loaded it into Photograv like everyone suggested (I made sure to make it the correct size, made it a negative, made it an 8 bit greyscale bmp file). I uploaded the image into Photograv, loaded the parameters for black marble (which I have to do EVERY time I want to burn marble since the parameters don't stay in the program once I load them), click auto process, clicked reprocess and checked the "simulation on" area and made sure mirror was off, saved the simulation, uploaded it into corel x3 (did not change the size of the image, I just hit enter to center the image), and burned it onto a piece of marble. Now, the first time it burned it was HORRIBLE. But I was able to figure out one of the mistakes (it was mine) was because I scanned the image in at 300 dpi but when I sent it to the laser to burn, I sent it at 600 dpi (it must default to 600 because I didn't even think to check that part). I changed it to 300 dpi and the burn was much better (you could see the image this time) but it was very grainy looking and you couldn't even see any details on my friend's face. I got the black marble from laserbits. My husband ran to Home Depot and Lowe's last night. Home Depot does not have it but they had a piece of black granite my husband brought home that I have yet to try. Lowe's said one week until they could get it and I was hoping to have this done by Saturday night for the 40th birthday party. Any suggestions? I guess after reading all of the posts raving about Photograv I thought this was an awesome program. I am surprised that I have to upload things into Photograv, make adjustments, save them, and then upload it into something else, but don't dare change the size of it because that will throw everything for a loop.....I thought for over $400 you wouldn't have to do this. On the good side, it did come with a coupon good for the free upgrade when it comes out. The coupon is good for one year, so hopefully there is an upgrade before then ;)
Also I have another problem. I want to burn some lettering on the back of a glass pie plate. To do this, I need to flip the text around (make it backwards). I am trying like mad to do this in corel x3 and I am ready to pull my hair out. I bought a wireless mouse since the keyboard mouse is driving me absolutely insane when trying to do this. Well guess what? The keyboard mouse is not compatible with Vista (which I have). I tried to use "mirror horizontally" it doesn't do anything. When choosing "mirror vertically" it flips it upside down. Am I using the wrong buttons? I uploaded the text into Corel Photo Paint and in there, you use the buttons called object and then flip. This works perfect. I tried to copy and paste the text back into the Corel Draw and it makes the text all jagged (I knew this would happen from my experience years ago working for a local newspaper doing page design). I looked for something called flip in Corel x3 and it takes me to "mirroring". So I made this good internet buddy named Al (he comes here too). He gave me step by step directions on how to use my keyboard mouse to click on the text with the pick tool, left click, hold on the control key and drag to the right (or something like that). I spent an hour last night trying to do it and all it kept doing was flipping the text upside down. Today he mentioned maybe I should just select mirror under my print options but I read several places on this sight that said I shouldn't do that.......oh gosh I am just really frustrated today. I know it's something easy that I just can't figure out and once I learn it will never forget it :) haha!
I looked at alot of the pictures of things you all uploaded to share and everything is sooo awesome!! It gives me hope to keep plugging away and trying different things until I find the sweet spots for the materials with my laser. Just last night I saw a picture of an old building (school?)that a woman on here uploaded and it took my breath away. She mentioned she has been "only" doing this two years.....her work is amazing :) Something for me to look forward to. I can't think of her name. She is from Texas, so you probably know who I am talking about :)
Sorry this is so long. I have been lurking here for a long time and finally applied for membership a few days ago and got my "ok" today so I had a lot built up to talk about.
Oh yeah one last question.....I see the moderator has developed a "trick" to bring out the white in the black marble by puting armor all on the black marble. Can someone tell me......do I spray it on and wipe it in? Or do I leave it wet and then run it through the laser? Thanks!! :)
Lisa
I have already been having some problems (no surprise right? haha!). Most materials have been going great for me, but the past week I have been having trouble with burning images on black marble. I have read many many postings on here to help me out and tried a few ideas (and perfectly written steps) that did not work for me. They made things better than what they were, but my images still aren't the best. For instance, a good male friend of mine is turning 40 this Saturday. I wanted to make him a personalized gift that he would love. His wife gave me a picture of him sitting on his grandfather's favorite tractor that he restored himself (he belongs to an antique tractor club). I bought the Photograv software that cost me an arm and a leg. The software arrived with a letter that there are some new parameters that are included on the cd but not loaded in the software and I can load them myself. So I loaded the parameters but they don't show up under the choice of product menu. If I look at the details of the product I am getting ready to burn it shows up under there. I have to be honest. For over $400 for this software I expected a lot better out of it. It looks very basic. I am just learning it so I can't make a judgement yet on if it works very basic. So anyway, I adjusted my tractor image BEFORE I loaded it into Photograv like everyone suggested (I made sure to make it the correct size, made it a negative, made it an 8 bit greyscale bmp file). I uploaded the image into Photograv, loaded the parameters for black marble (which I have to do EVERY time I want to burn marble since the parameters don't stay in the program once I load them), click auto process, clicked reprocess and checked the "simulation on" area and made sure mirror was off, saved the simulation, uploaded it into corel x3 (did not change the size of the image, I just hit enter to center the image), and burned it onto a piece of marble. Now, the first time it burned it was HORRIBLE. But I was able to figure out one of the mistakes (it was mine) was because I scanned the image in at 300 dpi but when I sent it to the laser to burn, I sent it at 600 dpi (it must default to 600 because I didn't even think to check that part). I changed it to 300 dpi and the burn was much better (you could see the image this time) but it was very grainy looking and you couldn't even see any details on my friend's face. I got the black marble from laserbits. My husband ran to Home Depot and Lowe's last night. Home Depot does not have it but they had a piece of black granite my husband brought home that I have yet to try. Lowe's said one week until they could get it and I was hoping to have this done by Saturday night for the 40th birthday party. Any suggestions? I guess after reading all of the posts raving about Photograv I thought this was an awesome program. I am surprised that I have to upload things into Photograv, make adjustments, save them, and then upload it into something else, but don't dare change the size of it because that will throw everything for a loop.....I thought for over $400 you wouldn't have to do this. On the good side, it did come with a coupon good for the free upgrade when it comes out. The coupon is good for one year, so hopefully there is an upgrade before then ;)
Also I have another problem. I want to burn some lettering on the back of a glass pie plate. To do this, I need to flip the text around (make it backwards). I am trying like mad to do this in corel x3 and I am ready to pull my hair out. I bought a wireless mouse since the keyboard mouse is driving me absolutely insane when trying to do this. Well guess what? The keyboard mouse is not compatible with Vista (which I have). I tried to use "mirror horizontally" it doesn't do anything. When choosing "mirror vertically" it flips it upside down. Am I using the wrong buttons? I uploaded the text into Corel Photo Paint and in there, you use the buttons called object and then flip. This works perfect. I tried to copy and paste the text back into the Corel Draw and it makes the text all jagged (I knew this would happen from my experience years ago working for a local newspaper doing page design). I looked for something called flip in Corel x3 and it takes me to "mirroring". So I made this good internet buddy named Al (he comes here too). He gave me step by step directions on how to use my keyboard mouse to click on the text with the pick tool, left click, hold on the control key and drag to the right (or something like that). I spent an hour last night trying to do it and all it kept doing was flipping the text upside down. Today he mentioned maybe I should just select mirror under my print options but I read several places on this sight that said I shouldn't do that.......oh gosh I am just really frustrated today. I know it's something easy that I just can't figure out and once I learn it will never forget it :) haha!
I looked at alot of the pictures of things you all uploaded to share and everything is sooo awesome!! It gives me hope to keep plugging away and trying different things until I find the sweet spots for the materials with my laser. Just last night I saw a picture of an old building (school?)that a woman on here uploaded and it took my breath away. She mentioned she has been "only" doing this two years.....her work is amazing :) Something for me to look forward to. I can't think of her name. She is from Texas, so you probably know who I am talking about :)
Sorry this is so long. I have been lurking here for a long time and finally applied for membership a few days ago and got my "ok" today so I had a lot built up to talk about.
Oh yeah one last question.....I see the moderator has developed a "trick" to bring out the white in the black marble by puting armor all on the black marble. Can someone tell me......do I spray it on and wipe it in? Or do I leave it wet and then run it through the laser? Thanks!! :)
Lisa