Color mapping without dithering?

[James Stokes]

To me it sounds like the laser is just a hair out of alignment. A couple things you can do to change depth in areas, !. Duplicate the part you want deeper and leave it directly on top of the other. 2. For smoothing I raise my lens up and take it out of focas, This will give you a bigger spot and more overlap.

[Stanley Waldrup]

Terry, Go to your printer Driver select the Raster tab then turn off Dithering. Select Error Diffusion and select Floyd... Works for me..
Stanley

[James Terry]

That tab disappears when you select manual color fill which is what I am using here. There is no raster control, or rastering from what I can see.

[Mike vonBuelow]

Nice info!

[Mike Null]

I would think this would go without saying but I'll say it anyway. Wood is not uniform in hardness nor density therefore it is likely that you will always have variations in the marks made by the laser when using wood materials.

[Niklas Bjornestal]

I would think this would go without saying but I'll say it anyway. Wood is not uniform in hardness nor density therefore it is likely that you will always have variations in the marks made by the laser when using wood materials.

I think thats the explanation why you get the pattern when engraving perpendicular to the grain since each line will have alot of variable deapth due to the variation in hardness in the grain. When engraving with the grain the lines will be different deapth but that wont show up as much.
Try engraving the same image using acrylic (or other material with uniform density) and see if you get the same result.

When engraving pine the variation in density for the grain is very visible, it varies a about 4-5 mm between the soft/hard spots using 100sp/100pw on my 25W mercury II.

[Joe De Medeiros]

Eureka!

I am pretty sure that I resolved my problem, but not yet so sure why. What I mean is that I found my improved output but I am not sure why it is a problem to begin with. It suggests that there is more going on with my beam than just a focused micro dot.

I havent yet come across any pertinent reading regarding wood grain and lasers, but simply, I adjusted so that the grain of the wood is parallel to the travel of the laser head. No more boxes.

This tells me that the laser beam is either not perfect or is making some 'lines' deeper than others. When perpendicular to the wood grain, ugly dither-like line patterns emerge. When done with the grain, I guess it is hidden.

So is the dot width actually making a semi-circle crater in the wood such that it is deepest in the center and lightest on the edges? Then for each line, there ends up being a line of material at the edges of the beam that form a high point or a ridge that was noticeable against the grain? Perhaps my beam is out of focus? Perhaps there is dust in the beam path?


The unwanted dither-like problem presenting itself:
The "fix" by adjusting the wood grain. Grain hides the error?

In the epilog manual it mentions that it's better to engrave with the grain