Forcing single power engraves

Posting this in response to a question about single power “etching” over in P&S…

If you want to be absolutely sure that an engrave is being done at a single power level, select Manual Engrave and set the power/speed to the desired setting. Under engrave options, Select “Map grays to power” and set the minimum value to the same power level. The UI will subtract 0.01 unit (I’m using “pirate-ninjas” BTW :grinning: ) when you tab or click away. This will effectively guarantee that the laser is using the same power level throughout the engrave.

Disclaimer: I have not experienced the issue the OP reported, and still believe that the dithered engraves use a constant power value, but this procedure might be useful for troubleshooting. Hopefully helpful, but not authoritative. YMMV.

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This is also a good thing to do for b&w engraves on things like aluminum or slate. Except use 0 as minimum (whites) and 100 for max (black). The “map grays to power” eliminates the dithering that will otherwise be applied to your engrave by the GF. Same if you needed to apply a dithering algorithm to a color or grayscale pic to make it b&w in your image app - you don’t want the GF doubling down on your dithering.

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Just don’t forget that if you use any kind of masking you have to burn through it. (And there will also be minimum levels for making a usable mark on some materials. I was fascinated to discover in one test that “1” wasn’t really dark enough for my printer paper.)

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I’ve found that 5-10 on the min power is needed to burn through the masking on the PG wood products. With slate and things I don’t mask.

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I never mask on photo engraves.

I’m using “pirate-ninjas”

Mark Watney would be proud.

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