Need Help!- Laser engraving on wood - lines appearing

[4040]

Hi - So I have managed to get up and running to a half decent process now but I am still unhappy with the final results.

I laser engrave photos onto oak finish lacquered wood but where the burn mark is supposed to fill a certain area, there are unburnt lines that appear making the result look very stripey - see attached image.

I need to engrave onto this wood - does anyone have any suggestions as to how to improve the final result? My machine is using virtually full power and if I darken the image any further using software, it spoils the rest of the picture.

I have tried neutral then brown shoe polish but this does not help. If anything, this smudges the burn and the picture looks more faded with the stripes still showing.

I'm hoping that perhaps there is some kind of wood stain or something out there that you pros can recommend.

[keebler303]

That's really not a great picture. Are the lines from the laser or the wood grain? Hard to tell the scale of things there. You might need to increase your "lines per inch" on the vertical axis so that it takes more passes. Only a guess without better pictures.

Matt

[4040]

Originally Posted by keebler303 That's really not a great picture. Are the lines from the laser or the wood grain? Hard to tell the scale of things there. You might need to increase your "lines per inch" on the vertical axis so that it takes more passes. Only a guess without better pictures. Matt

The lines are from the wood grain accentuated by the laser's engraving.

I use Paintshop Pro, Photograv and output from MoshiDraw, the only software I am aware of that allows to output from the PC.

I will try to increase the lines per inch - anyone have an idea of how to do this in Photograv? I will take a look myself later.

I was experimenting with MoshiDraw before and managed to get it to engrave deeper which has definitely improved the output - thanks Matt

[keebler303]

Its hard to get around the wood grain issue. Oak has really hard places with soft ones in between so it engraves unevenly. Going deeper would help. If you are max power then you might need to slow down. In photograv lets say your image is 300 DPI. Is your machine really engraving 300 lines per inch or is it doing something less? This setting would be in the laser software most likely. Each machine is different.

Just takes some experimenting to get something that looks good.

Matt

[vincenttor]

i have used photograv and did not gave me good results, well after a while.
Try 1-touch-photo laser from ULS if im correct

This one is much more simple and it gives me pretty good engravings just look into my Good dithering image topic.
those are made with 1touch software

[keebler303]

I have used photograv a bit, not too much. It will work you just need to tinker with it a while. Sometimes the settings it recommends for a certain material are not what works best.

[herby08]

Hi there
do you use a chinese machine?
It looks to me as if your machine loose some steps ether from the laser or from the stepper motor, it could be the laser power supply
engrave a 50mm square with 50% laser power then check the square if the lines are still there then you need to look at the machine if :
the belts are tight in x and Y axis, uninstall moshidraw and re-install it .
I had similar problemes thats why I converted the whole thing to a DSP system, now I dont have this probleme anymore
greetings
walt

Originally Posted by 4040 Hi - So I have managed to get up and running to a half decent process now but I am still unhappy with the final results. I laser engrave photos onto oak finish lacquered wood but where the burn mark is supposed to fill a certain area, there are unburnt lines that appear making the result look very stripey - see attached image. I need to engrave onto this wood - does anyone have any suggestions as to how to improve the final result? My machine is using virtually full power and if I darken the image any further using software, it spoils the rest of the picture. I have tried neutral then brown shoe polish but this does not help. If anything, this smudges the burn and the picture looks more faded with the stripes still showing. I'm hoping that perhaps there is some kind of wood stain or something out there that you pros can recommend.