Universal Laser Image Enhancement- Anyone doing it?

[Scott Shepherd]

Seems like I've tuned a couple of pieces of material in the last year, but I must admit to being laser and not worry about it too much. That was until this week when I got some 3 pt. fonts to work with. Engraved a batch,wasn't happy with the results, so I finally whipped out the book and "tuned" that material with the "Image Enhancement" option.

WOW......what a powerful tool. Cranked up the speed to 100% on a 3 pt font, 5 adjustments later, razor sharp 3 pt fonts at 100% speed.

Next job had some fine lines on it, different material, some small text too. Took 15 minutes and tuned that material and the results have really surprised me.

So now I'm taking the time to tune the materials like I was supposed to have been doing for the last year. I can say that my engraving has never been sharper.

Anyone else using the Image Enhancement tool like we're supposed to be doing?

Just curious, since I never see anything posted about it.

[Bob Cole]

Is that feature only with PLS? I don't recall any mention of that on my X series.

[Mike Mackenzie]

Bob,

If you are using Win XP / Vista and driver version 1.07M or above then you have that advantage. Look in the Advanced tab of the driver.

[Steve Chalmers]

Scott,

I've used it a fair amount. . .I love what it does with text, but so far I'm not as happy with the results that I've gotten with graphics. I was already running at 100% speed, so there wasn't any speed improvement. But there certainly was on the quality of the text. . .especially on the real small points.

Still working on the graphics quality. . .right now I have very pronounced diagonal stripes. . .not banding, but stripes! Really makes for an interesting look. I guess it would be fine if I were doing pictures of Zebras. . .

Steve

[Mike Mackenzie]

Steve,

Image enhancements will not effect bitmap (greyscale) images. It is only for the text you should turn it off when you run bitmap images or convert it to black and white or vector trace and fill with solid rgb black.

What material are you getting the diagonal stripes in/on?

[Steve Chalmers]

Mike,

My striping is happening on Alumamark. . .both satin silver and satin gold. I run 40-60 10x12 sheets for the same client each month. . .the artwork will vary from plaque to plaque, but it is the same artwork that I've been working with for over a year now so the settings were pretty much dialed in to give me nice glossy black results.

I'll try your suggestions and let you know how things turn out. . .thank you.

Steve

[Scott Shepherd]

Steve, a couple of things (from memory, so I might not be correct), but first thing to check is make sure the tracks (upper and lower) are clean.

Second, Alumamark can be tough to work with. What worked before might not work due to a different batch. I had that same problem, and I called their tech support and they told me that it was common and it had to do with their manufacturing process. She also told me that the Satin Silver was notorious for those problems and a very tough one to get a great image from.

Odd, that came directly from their tech support, when after all, they market it to laser owners.

[Steve Chalmers]

Thanks Scott, but the tracks are kept very clean. And, if I turn off enhancement I don't have the problem.

You're absolutely correct about there being variances in the satin silver. . .but for whatever reason I've not had a problem with it once I got everything dialed in.

Not as long as you don't count the zebra stripes anyway. . .

At this point I still haven't ruled out operator error. . .

Steve