A lot of people have problems with plastics that either have a red or blue top on white or vice versa a white top and either a red or white core. The problem that people have is typically a contamination of the colour that invades the white and discolours the white core. In some of the earlier days of laser engraving I use to have a lot of problems with the Rowmark Lasermark series. However this problem for me has become a non issue since the release of our new Encore laserable product. This product has a very good acrylic core and the pigments from the colours do not migrate like they do on other plastics. However there is one thing as a laser engraver that you have to do and that is use the least amount of power that you can. This is not only in raster engraving but also in vector engraving. The problem that people have is that they use way to much power. In this video I am going at 100% speed, 19% power and 600 DPI on a 60 watt laser. DO NOT USE WHAT YOUR LASER SUPPLIER SAYS – TEST YOUR MATERIALS WITH YOUR LASER. Click here

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Laser  Engraving or Sublimating Photographs

One of the biggest issues that faces us as engravers is reproducing photos onto a variety of products. Reproducing photos is not easy – even for those of us who have done a lot of it. Part of the problem is that there are so many substrates to work on and so many different types of photographs. There are some off the shelf programs that have tried to make doing photos easier but they tend to have mixed results. Programs such as PhotoLaser Plus, 1 Touch Photo and PhotoGrav provide these so called one click fits all solutions. PhotoLaser and PhotoGrav have gone one step further in that they will also give you the ability to tweak the image from within their software and have it try and display the image on a simulated display of the material you are working on. This tweaking can give you better results. However my experience with these programs is that they are again hit and miss. Why they are hit and miss can be caused by a number of factors and when you understand these factors you can achieve a better chance of getting it right. Which is why I am doing this series of articles. Hopefully I can clear up some of the confusion that rains down on this topic – and not only in our industry.  … Continue Reading

Adjusting a Picture of the Eagles

In this example we will be lasering an image of an eagle onto black laser tile. Figure 1 shows a photo that I bought off the Internet. I am using this image because I want to see what the effect of having our background image being a bit out of focus and to see how it appears on the tile.
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Laser Engraving Wood

It may seem trivial to talk about laser engraving wood but considering that it is one of the products that most of us do a lot than we should spend some time talking about it. We can talk about raster engraving and vector engraving as two separate processes when it comes to wood.

Raster Engraving Wood

When a laser is raster engraving (Figure 1 shows us some samples of raster engraved images) the laser marks with a back and forth motion. This motion is similar to what you would see with a laser printer or an inkjet printer. The laser slowly moves its way down the table. The amount of the movement is dictated by the dpi that has been chosen in the driver. When we are engraving a message in wood we use the raster movement of the laser to create the message. … Continue Reading