I'm rastering pens made of cocobolo with a customer's logo. I've always had a problem getting much contrast on darker woods. Sometimes using a combination of raster plus a vector outline helps. I thought I'd solicit experience and wisdom from this group on improving the contrast. I'm using a 45 watt Epilog Legend 24TT. My typical raster settings for pens are 400 DPI, 50-60 speed and 100 power. With cocobolo and other dark woods I've tried 600 DPI with no visible improvement. I've tried combinations of speed / power of 50/100, 40/100, 30/75 and 20/50 (trying not to cut too deep so as not to get to the brass sleeve).
The engraving looks just fine except that there is virtually no contrast with the surrounding surface. I'm trying to avoid filling or otherwise painting the engraved logo to save my time and the customer's money.
Any suggestions or comments would be appreciated.
Paul Proffitt
Suwanee, GA
Epilog Legend 24TT - 45 Watt, Corel 12, Illustrator CS and a few (OK maybe more than a few) other shop tools.