Engrave by Color Default Shades

Just a quick example of a 3D engrave on proofgrade using the default shade options. I was curious how differently they would come out. These are all straight from the forge, and will likely look a bit clearer with some cleanup and the tape removed. Print size was small too, about 2"x1.5"

Source

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The middle one came out great!

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You can clean some of the charring off the third one, which should make it look great! I use a tooth brush.

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Yeah the first one, I am not sure what happen, perhaps it’s just the art but that setting seems useless. Second one is closest to my expectations. Third should look nice with a bit of a wash. I’m a total laser newb, but it seems like all 3 could benefit from more lines per inch as well. Maybe because im printing small? Not sure.

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I saw similar issues with that lightest setting barely making it through the masking paper. Someone suggested that they got good results with it on unmasked material, but I haven’t tried that yet myself.

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Interesting, thats prob a bug then since its proofgrade and I would think the defaults should get through the tape. @Rita is this a known issue?

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I haven’t found that lightest setting to be terribly useful. It’s only 75LPI. I mostly choose manual LPI settings to get a bit more flexibility in color.

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The LPI on the lightest setting is pretty low (75LPI). I had good success choosing the middle option, going to manual engrave and upping the LPI.

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Yeah I may have to start tinkering with that, as I said I am a total laser newb and trying to see how things work out of the box before I start to introduce the chaos of misunderstanding haha.

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I hear ya! FWIW I was a complete laser newbie before I got the Pre-Release unit. It won’t take long before you are an expert!

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so, this is a fun demo and all, and i’m happy to blame the source or whatever,

but…

i don’t consider any of these good enough to display, let alone sell.

i actually find the first one the most interesting, because i think it might lend itself well to fun 8-bit style engravings. i see now that these are 2 inches across, presumably large pieces look better because you have more effective resolution?

Here they are after a quick rinse with a toothbrush and the tape layer removed.

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How deep is the 3D depth? I am confused because I thought 3D engraving was disabled.

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One important thing to remember: higher LPI may give you a darker result (at least the way things are currently) because you’re zapping the same area repeatedly for any setting above 125 LPI. I don’t know if/how this will be played with as low power and so forth gets rolled out.

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This is on 1/8th ply with a single pass, so the depth isn’t super deep. You can certainly see a gradient of steps of depth though.

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Yeah, the world of lasering seems to explode in variables, hence this test of the defaults. I don’t think these qualify as high end examples of what the GF can do, its just what the out of the box settings do in this particular case.

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Think it’s been said before, but the 3D more foolproof option in the user interface is disabled. Not the ability for us to create 3D with manual settings.

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3D engrave is still disabled (at least I haven’t seen it yet), this is just using “engrave by color”, which still gives a pretty good effect.

Edit: @rpegg beat me again!

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It still is, at least for my PRU:

That being said, Engrave by Color provides an amazingly rich, deep engrave on shaded files like this. I’m looking forward to having the full 3D engrave option enabled.

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Yep, I’ve updated the title to better reflect this. In my mind it was a 3d engrave attempt, just not using the legit 3d engrave option (which is still disabled).

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