No Idea Why

[Terry Wade]

I'm working on engraving some Kershaw pocket knives for a client. I wanted to run a test before running the real thing and I don't know why I didn't get full image. I am showing in one picture what I want and a picture of what I got. Anyone have any idea why it did this, is there something wrong with the laser? I'm at a total loss. PXL_20240312_164924649.jpgPXL_20240312_165044196.MP.jpg

[Terry Wade]

I have done a little bit of testing and it seems that there must be something wrong with the PNG file. I have engraved this PNG file many times without any issues. Now my question is, is it the file or is it a problem with the EasyCad2 software? Should I look into Lightburn software and what kind of can of worms am I opening if I go that way?

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

Have you tried slowing down the engraving speed? What about editing the PNG file and converting it to strictly black and white instead of grayscale or color?

[Kev Williams]

Just taking a pot-shot in the dark here, but have you experimented with different "TC" timing settings? I notice yours are 150/180/200/100-- after fiddling with my settings over the years, for awhile now I have all my fibers set at 70/135/150/85... reason for these settings, they seem to me to run faster than many other settings I've tried, produce great results, and the laser 'sounds' better, to me anyway, as in, there seems to be more 'cutting' sounds to it and less 'buzzing' sounds. I experimented just over the weekend with the first number, and I found that the higher that number, the finer/narrower the beam spot seemed to be. Which may be great for deep engraving, BUT may require a tighter hatch-? The difference in spot size was apparent by eye when lightly engraving store-bought black anodized aluminum, the more I raised the first number, the finer, less-bold the text I was engraving was. I went to 200, but not sure where the 'diminishing returns" max might be! In most cases I still use 70, but I raised it to 150 to run some less-than 1mm text, and it worked great! -I haven't changed the last 3 number settings for years...

Might find some help by messing with those numbers a bit?

And JMO, the 300mm/s speed on his computer should be PLENTY slow enough!

And final edit- I've never used Lightburn, only EzCad... clunky or not, I get it to work

[Terry Wade]

Thank you Kev for the guidance, I have not ever messed with those settings because it always worked and I didn't know what those settings control. I plugged in the settings suggested and they worked perfect. I need to hunt down the info on that group of settings and get a better understanding of what each setting does.