Issue with engraving bitmaps on Explorer, need advice

[Jakub Borowicz]

Until recently, I used old Corel 9 and Win98
and did not have any problems with engraving black&white bitmaps on Explorer.
Now I'm runnig Corel 12 and WinXP and I can not engrave them.
Instead of getting my drawing GCC Expolorer engraves black rectangles.
The same drawings engraved on the Universal who stands next are OK.
When I change the bitmaps on grayshade, Exporer engraves it, but they are fuzzy -therefore, it is not a good solution.
I tried to change unless all the settings, reinstalled Win and software but without success, still getting rectangles.
I have no idea what may be a reason.
Is this a Corel issue, XP issue or Explorer issue ?
How are you engraving BW bitmaps on Explorer ? (as I wrote to the ULS is not the problem)
Can someone please give me directions on how to engrave B/W bitmaps ?

Jakub B.

[Darren Null]

Some guesses:

1) Wrong driver for explorer/XP

2) File format: Corel did change the way it handles bitmaps after version 9 (which is why you get all the "less than 96dpi" crap in subsequent versions), so there could be something that corel doesn't like about the bitmaps you're using. More recent corels don't like JPEGs anyway; if there's anything wrong with them (saved by a program using a slightly different format, possibly), it's possible corel is misinterpreting them.

3) Are you in the wrong mode on your laser? I can't think of a way to get your results offhand, but if your images are pure black and white, then try putting the laser in black&white/manual mode and see what happens

4) A possible- your 'black and white' images contain various shades of grey feathering at the boundaries. That might explain your being able to get (fuzzy) images when you change to greyscale. And MIGHT JUST confuse the laser enough to give you black rectangles.

Best guess would be driver/laser settings. Good luck.