Greetings, all.
Recently, every engraving job I've tried to do involving laserable plastic has messed up, and I don't know why. My most recent fail, earlier today was to engrave some store name tags out of a medium I've used successfully in the past. I used the engraving settings as recommended (and previously used, a lot) for the Epilog Zing 30, and after my first run-through of rastering, everywhere that was supposed to be black was actually white (the material is a gold coloured thin membrane over the thicker black base). Where the white came from, I've no idea. I did the job again (using the same piece just rastered) and the white gradually got darker. Re-engraving over and over again, adjusting the speed (lower and lower) and the power (higher and higher) made only marginal gains, but I finally got it to where the application of some acetone could wipe off the white entirely.
Then I started to cut out the badges (finally, after about 35-40 minutes of rastering what should have been a 4 minute task), and ended up having to vector cut them three times. They finally got to the point where I could separate them from the plastic, with effort, but didn't look good at all.
I would upload fotos, but for some reason SMC keeps telling me that my jpegs "fail to upload".
Anyway, I've cleaned the mirrors, I think, along with the lens at the laser source and over the material, to no avail. Any suggestions/ideas would be greatly appreciated.
I have been doing these simple things off and on for a few years now; the only difference is that I recently signed on to LaserU from Laserbits, and started following their course; now the problems are cropping up. Coincidence? Very likely, but disconcerting, none the less. Thanks much folks.