I haven’t had much time for the GF (or anything else) lately, but a couple mornings ago I did manage to get to the place where Bill currently lives and try some defocused stuff.
First the bad news, not even worth a picture. Defocused score on tile: not terribly useful. Makes a sort of valley in the glaze that doesn’t really hold ink.
Good news: defocused engrave on BB can save oodles of time with a drop in quality that may or may not be visible.
Those squares are (L-R): 10 lpi surface focus, 35 lpi focused at (I think) 0.300 and 0.500, and 75 lpi at 0.500. I forget the powers, but can look back. The text is 225 lpi focused, and 75 and 35 lpi at 0.500.
Close up the 75 doesn’t look great (might improve with a score around the edges), but from signage distance it’s fine. And for testing it’s a third the time. 35 is totally my old Okidata.
I’m also working on using 75 and maybe 35 defocused for zapping mylar to make crude silkscreen/stencil sheets: convert to dots and 65% max density almost works. Not appropriate for everything, but way easy for the things it does work for.
All that resolution dan&company built in, and I’m throwing it away