We also have a forum member who put together an excellent collection of notes, links and, answers to common questions that is worth the time to check out:
What instructions are you following for inlay and photo engraving?
There are some good threads on doing inlays and engraving photos here in the forum. You can use the search to look for threads with keywords like “inlay” or “engrave photo.”
Be patient with yourself. Most of this takes some effort and experimentation to get perfect, even with instructions.
I am generally not doing things that push the cutting envelope for area or speed. So, I am not paying a lot of attention to changes on the minutia of that. I think this is still correct:
For getting photo engraving results, a lot of it is in the file prep. This post has what I think is essentially the current best practices:
There are different ways to do inlay. The inlay I have done so far has been by compositing pieces of roughly equal thickness cut all the way through (vs. cutting pockets in one material and filling with thinner material like veneer). That involves dialing in settings for the material (e.g. with New material cut test method ), adjusting for kerf (“kerf” is a good topic for a forum search – I generally start with .15mm/.006in. for hardwoods) and, flipping adjacent pieces (because the laser cuts at a slight angle – AKA “flipmating”).
Here is a recent short of me doing that kind of inlay:
