Engraving images

[phil2simmons]

We recently got a laser cutter at our school and we are looking for different things to do with it. At the moment I am trying to engrave images onto black perspex. I am assuming I need to set the image into greyscale. Does anyone know how to assign power and speeds to the different scales of grey or is there a program that can do this automatically?

[Spooky]

What model of Laser Phil?

In general pictures are re-imaged to black and white with software to give the correct colour spans.

kind regards

Dave

[phil2simmons]

Hi
We got an LS6090 and its great. I can convert the images to silhouettes from our 2D design package. Is that what you mean prior to importing to the laser?

[Spooky]

Hiya Phil,

The HPC series of lasers don't have variable power drivers afaik for engraving pictures so what you do instead is convert the image to black and white or Greyscale then set the laser to "Engrave" that layer rather than cut as you would with a vector. The more expensive industrial lasers have variable power during run but your looking at a LOT more money for one of those (£40k+ for even a small machine).
Just select import as you would with a normal vector but instead select the raster image(BMP,JPG etc) you wish to engrave.

hope that helps

best wishes

Dave

[HPCLaser]

Hi Phil,
Do you have Corel draw -if so you can change the image to grey scale, then change to bitmap then in effects select stipple this creates a pixelated image the laser can engrave with different densitys.
The other option is photoshop where you change to greyscale then in effects use the halftone screen this pixellates the image again if you struggle let me know ill put up a how to guide.
Thanks Chris