Inspired by the beauty and wildlife last week in Alaska, I decided to create a series of projects to commemorate. This is a test tile. Do I need to increase the dpi? power? decrease time? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
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Best feedback I could offer is that there’s no picture…
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Good catch 
My bad, its there now.
Now that I can SEE it, looks to me like you’ve got it. Good contrast, nice blacks, great detail. What were you trying to get?
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This looks awesome! Did you take this pic?
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It just seem pixelated.
No, I wish. It was from a stock photo site.
Maybe grainy is the right word instead of pixelated.
The moon is grainy…moondust and such, ya know…
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You’re laser-engraving a ceramic tile that’s been painted with black spray paint, right? That came out beautifully! The only thing I might think to try is to spray (perhaps) a layer of orange or brown and then black? Might give the moon more of a tint. But if I was making that tile, it’d already have been given to one of the kids… (Or kept for myself!)
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It was painted with flat white rust oleum and then set to engrave. The laser turns the paint black and bonds it to the glaze.
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Oh, okay. I was thinking of the OTHER painted tile method where you paint the tile with a color, then follow that with two or three layers of black, then burn the paint OFF… Was thinking that a moon that low in the sky might look good with an orange Tint.
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I did one like that on canvas that I just posted.
The difference with the norton method is that nothing short of destroying the tile will remove the blacks. As opposed to the paint removal method that can be removed pretty easily. 
Do a search for “norton white tile method” and you’ll find that we did quite a bit of testing a while back after finding the method being used by diode laser users.
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And I think you got it pretty well set @ovm.steve. You might want to up the lpi, but otherwise it turned out really good. The white shining through from the tile almost looks like it’s really illuminating the scene.
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Thank you. This is a 4x4 tile and it took nearly two hours at 270 lpi. I have a 6x6 prepped and ready to go to make one for the couple that went with us on the trip, I’ll do 340 on it (unless you think I need to go higher).
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I think I went with 340 myself last time I made one. I think there’s a bit of a point where going higher isn’t going to work because I think the spalling creates a dot a bit larger than the laser point. That would mean that the overlapped line wouldn’t gain any extra black. At least that makes sense in my brain. I haven’t tested that theory at all. 
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So…the rustoleum paint turns black upon lasering. And it turns grey when lasering at a lower power? Is that how the moon was achieved? Hmmm…wow. Great work. Not sure I would change anything.
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Beautiful job. My husband would drool over the ability to capture that pic:-)
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