These two images are engraved with the same settings.
The crisp one was done first as a test. The second was done second as a batch with several instances.
The pig one they were done a day apart with no other jobs in between.
The text ones were done back to back minutes apart.
In both Cases they used the same settings. 100 speed. 270 lines, 50 power (pig) 60 power (text).
I increased the power after ruining 60 of the pig tokens when I tried the text. Got a great run off the text at first. Then the second job right after isn’t as crisp.
Support won’t be able to help much with non-PG materials/settings - can you replicate the issue using the Gift of Good Measure on PG? If so, it may be a an issue with your machine. If there are no issues there, then I’m going to guess there is variation in your materials. A layer of oils could be the culprit, or the laser having an issue focusing on the material - try entering the height manually on the custom settings tab and see if that addresses it?
to go along with that… there’s no reason at all not to use full power on metal. You won’t etch the actual material so blast it with everything you got to ensure that it gets rid of the paint.
maybe better then alcohol is acetone – to clean it down to bare metal.
I had issues doing a metal engrave because there was some ‘coating’ of plastic on the metal
after the burn, the image just rubbed off.