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Thread: Photo engraving granite using Corel and VLS6.60

  1. #1
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Location
    Auckland,New Zealand
    Posts
    308

    Photo engraving granite using Corel and VLS6.60

    I wasted half of my day playing with granite today. A customer is threatening to come in this week for some granite photo engraving. I finally got it sorted using Corel Draw and my Universal laser cutter. I ended up with 100% power and 50% speed with my 60 watts. It took 30 minutes to engrave a 300x300mm granite tile at density 3. It was the cheap kind of tile with lots of flecks in it. I am sure a super black tile would have been much easier but they are very expensive here.

    Here are a couple of pictures. As usual I am keen on constructive feedback The big question I have is what is the durability of these engraved granite tiles? Will they damage, fade and wear? Do I need to protect it with a coating etc.

    marylin_sm.jpg

    And zoomed in to see the detail of the image processing
    marylin_zm_sm.jpg

    Cheers
    Keith
    Universal Laser VLS6.60, Tantillus 3D printer, Electronic design
    edns Group, Mairangi Bay, Auckland, New Zealand

  2. #2
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Location
    Townsville Australia
    Posts
    84
    Keith that seems to be a lot more power for granite than I use, but I am still only learning myself. My default with a Rayjet 30 Watt is power 30 speed 50.I even found that sometimes the photo looked better if I dropped the power down to 20. I found if I used too high power detail was lost. Same if I used high dpi to engrave. 333 looked better than 600 dpi. Granite will not fade or be effected by rain so it is great for outdoors. Unsure if it needs a coating for protection. The thing that you have going for your current setting is that it is easy to distinguish the image.
    Rayjet 30
    Coreldraw X6
    Roland GX24 Vinyl cutter

  3. #3
    Join Date
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    Quote Originally Posted by Keith Colson View Post
    I ended up with 100% power and 50% speed with my 60 watts
    Did you reverse those settings by mistake? That's WAY more power than you should need to use...
    Hi-Tec Designs, LLC -- Owner (and self-proclaimed LED guru )

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  4. #4
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Location
    Auckland,New Zealand
    Posts
    308
    Hi Guys

    Yes, you are right the power is much higher but there is a reason behind that. My image has a 10% black density with large contrast radius. This gave me a much brighter sharper image than I was able to obtain with other methods I tried.

    I can engrave at less than half the power with an image density of 20% or more but I cannot get the bright white and sharp contrast using that method. The granite I have tends to make a large spot if I want it bright so I compensated for that with a large contrast radius and a low density image

    I would attach the file but it is too big. If you have any Corel test files for granite I am keen to see how you have set them up.

    Cheers
    Keith
    Universal Laser VLS6.60, Tantillus 3D printer, Electronic design
    edns Group, Mairangi Bay, Auckland, New Zealand

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