Laser engraving

bre...@hatcher.co.za

unread,

Apr 16, 2021, 6:06:40 PM4/16/21

to London Hackspace

Hi

I have never really explored laser engraving of greyscale bitmap images (i.e. photos) before. I am familiar with the concept of engraving the fill of a vector shape.

Can anyone comment on using "our" laser to engrave greyscale bitmaps? I know that the control software has been changed to LightBurn, so that may make bitmap engraving possible/easier.

If it is possible to engrave bitmaps, does anyone have suggested settings for bitmap engraving on various materials using our laser?

Thanks

Brendon

bre...@hatcher.co.za

unread,

Apr 20, 2021, 2:47:55 PM4/20/21

to London Hackspace

Bump! Anyone have an answer for me???

Thanks

Rowan Hoggarth

unread,

Apr 20, 2021, 3:25:31 PM4/20/21

to london-h...@googlegroups.com

I've not tried it on our machine, but on an 100W epilolog (similar ish) I have engraved acrylic. The method was to burn a big square region and while the laser was running adjusting the power and frequency to find the 'min' and 'max' engraving action.

The visual effect was somewhat nonlinear so I used a gamma correction in my graphics package to pre-adjust my images. I believe lightburn has this built in? I used something like +1.1 IIRC.

After you have your base parameters I'd suggest burning blocks of greyscale gradient (black to white) and check that they come out looking linear.. this is then an iterative process of tweaking.

Ignoring all of this... One could also go for stippling on a B&W image, or use an algorthimically generated shading (vector) pattern. A few folk were playing with this before lockdown on the plotting machine, Tim wrote some nifty code to play with a selection of interesting algorithms

Hope this is useful,

TL:DR is test your material for min and max burn effect, then apply gamma to get your greyscale linear.

R

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "London Hackspace" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to london-hack-sp...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/london-hack-space/cf326e03-1124-4b78-a1d9-dfa60cd5ebccn%40googlegroups.com.

deanforbes

unread,

Apr 21, 2021, 11:26:59 AM4/21/21

to London Hackspace

I seem to recall John Lennon looking over our sofa at hackney road

that was done on our laser and I believe light burn is even better than the old software

Reply all

Reply to author

Forward