Need Advice/Help

[Sherry Poulos]

I have an Epilog Legend laser 35 watt 24x12. We have a sign shop and I normally just make plaques and name tags with it. I normally run things at 600 dpi. When and how do I judge when to change this setting? Are there guidelines to go by? I want to get more in depth with everything I can do with this laser. I'm still new kind of new to the field so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Side note: We are looking into getting an Epilog ext 60watt laser 36x24, so would the guidelines be the same for both lasers?

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

The best thing you can do is engrave a sample on wood with all your settings so you can visually see the difference. It takes a bit of time to keep changing the parameters, engrave a bit, change, engrave more, but in the long run, it's worth it to have a visual sample to refer to for years to come. I have several samples I refer to.

Sample 1 is engraved at 600 dpi on the wood I normally engrave. It's filled with squares ranging from 10% black to 100% black and I engraved each square with the same power/speed setting. (In the text below, the % is a filled squre and not actual text)

90/100 100% (spaces) 80/100 100%
90/100 90% (spaces) 80/100 90%
90/100 80% (spaces) 80/100 80%
etc.
I now have a quick reference to see how shades will look engraved.

The next sample shows different DPI with 100% black and a change of speeds. One column is 400 dpi, next is 600 dpi, then 1200 dpi.

90/100 100%
80/100 100%
70/100 100%
etc

The last sample shows DPI and shades of black engraved at the same speed.

70/100 100%
70/100 90%
70/100 80%
etc

You can also select the 3D option and see how it engraves the different shades of black.