Marble coming out great, settings adjusted with information from another post

[Bernie Fraser]

Just wanted to upload these photos of the 12" marble tiles I tested on. The tiles are jet black marble and I resized the photo in photoshop and saved it at 333dpi and imported into coreldraw to process through the Trotec commander software. Initial setting was 333dpi and 100 power and speed 25 on Rayjet 30. This is the default setting for marble for power and speed. The issue is I ended up with a very noticeable banding. Searched the forum and found a post where someone was having a similar result and they reduced power to 50 and speed to 15 so that is what I tried for the next attempt and it has come out great. I will do some more testing to find the best combination where the banding disappears. You can see a difference in colour and clarity between the two settings in the middle photo. Yes I know I do not have any baby photos for the test but this model works for food and has some great detail with the whiskers.

Marble 3.jpgMarble 1.jpgMarble 2.jpg

[Mike Null]

Bernie

That's a solid effort. Far better than most. Thanks for posting your great results.

[Bernie Fraser]

Thanks Mike,
I am really happy with it, and great information to be found in the forum. The post that I read with someone having a similar issue with their solution was a great help.

[Larry Folk]

Where did you get the tile from and what is it exactly.

Thanks

[Bernie Fraser]

The Marble tiles are not available in a local hardware store so I ordered them through a tile shop. The details on the receipt are MP JET BLACK Marble. They shipped in a white styrofoam box with no additional markings.

[Mayo Pardo]

Those look really great - excellent detail captured in the whiskers and hairs.
Did you fill with any paint or rub n buff or are they only engraved?

[Bernie Fraser]

Thanks Mayo,
They are only engraved and no need to paint fill at all, you can see the one that I engraved with the lower power and speed engraved with a brighter background. One thing I want to try next is to coat the tile with a sealer before engraving just so it is resistant to water stains. Marble is a great material for engraving. If you have a look below the dogs nose you can see a couple of spots, that is actually dirt on the dogs whiskers.

[Junior hall]

WOW I AM JUST BLOWN AWAY AT THIS I WISH I COULD ACCOMPLISH SOME THING LIKE THIS HOW DID YOU DO THIS i have a Boss laser engraver and use engrave lab 9 size is 16x20 I wish i could do this with my laser engraver as i am still practicing on free granite marble mirrors as i get the mirrors and marble and granite from a shop that are scrap pieces Pieces are any where from 12 inches to 45 inches long and 12 inches to 45 inches wide

[Bernie Fraser]

Hi Junior, I am only new to lasers and cannot say why yours is not turning out the way you want. I do think that Trotec have some good software at work to take the photo from CorelDraw and produce the engraving.Not much has been done by me to produce the engraving. These are photos of Marble but I found with the 12" granite tiles I ordered in they vary greatly with grain size in the granite. The finer grain granite engraved the best and I also found that I was overpowering with the granite which is blowing away the detail in the photo. The best person to help you Junior would be someone with the same laser who has had success with engraving photos.You are very lucky to have access to those sort of scraps, they are not small at all, great score. Hope you can get it all sorted, good luck.

[Junior hall]

Thanks Bernie i think with Boss Laser and Trotec they have the same software from the same developer but each company calls it some thing else but it all comes down to engrave lab.

How i found out about the scrap is i was watching a youtube video and the person was laser engraving on a piece of granite and marble and the person suggested to learn like he did was to contact your granite marble tile places and ask for scrap. So i did that and i get all the scrap they have outside in the huge bucket which is a 100 gallon water tank made out of hard plastic it is square with a medal frame

It may be i need to adjust my contrast some But awesome beautiful picture with the very detailed in the ears and whiskers

[Scott Shepherd]

Thanks Bernie i think with Boss Laser and Trotec they have the same software from the same developer but each company calls it some thing else but it all comes down to engrave lab.

Sorry, not even close to being the same thing. Trotec develops their own software and it's not shared with Boss lasers. They aren't even close to being the same thing. Trotec has a module for photographs that's made to work with their machine.

[Bernie Fraser]

Thanks Junior about the detail in the engraving. I was having a look at engrave lab on Google when Scott responded. I have never seen something similar to engrave lab before. When I started researching how to engrave photos here I tried a few of the methods for photo preparation that have been mentioned in other posts. Converting the photo to one bit etc. The funny thing is I did not need to try any of that at all. All that is needed is to have the photo as a RGB file, desaturate the photo, increase the sharpness and levels to where I think it looks good invert the photo and I engrave it from CorelDraw using the Trotec commander software. I was initially having trouble because of the course grain in the granite and using too much power when I was testing. All along this software was capable of producing excellent results with minimal prep work.

[Mike Null]

Engravlab is not used by Boss or Trotec. Engravlab is a derivative of Signlab software.

[Junior hall]

Sorry Scott i miss read as cadlink i think is the ones that make engravelab and several other software I know with engrave lab i tried calling cadlink and they told me i had to go to where i bought the software at as i didnt understand they are the ones that built the software so why not help with tech support With trotec i didn't know it was a different software so i apologize for being wrong

Bernie thanks i will try to learn more with a tech support remote access to my computer to get them to help step by step do now know i got to invert since i was engraving on marble and granite as i didn't know i had to invert any thing i thought well simple put it in the machine on the table and send it to the machine and hit start but its more to it than just cutting a design out of vinyl and putting it onto a mirror or such and putting it into the sandblast cabinet... I like laser engraving much better than sandblasting it seems much easier once i get to learn all this with engrave lab..

Once again i love the pictures of the dog great detailed with the hair and whiskers awesome hope some day soon i can be able to do that in detailes

[Junior hall]

I bought a laser engraver from Boss laser and it came with engrave lab 9 see Boss laser web site as it comes with engrave lab 9. I bought the laser engraver with computer and engrave lab 9 complete package The laser machine i bought was a 16x20 co2 engraver