It might not increase the contrast much.
Basically there are a few ways to make darker lines, roughly in order of effectiveness (in my experience):
- Use a material that is known to engrave very dark like most mahoganies and cork. (off the table here, obviously)
- Go slower.
- Go higher LPI.
- Go higher power.
And then there’s off-laser techniques like painting in the engraved area or pretreating the wood with stuff like borax to make it engrave darker. (Sort of too late to do either of these techniques)
The problem is that all of these things is likely to be difficult to “match”.
I still think that you can just call it art and move forward, I think it looks really cool. It helped me out to think of “the intent is what’s important, not the actual implementation”.
Take this project I did ages ago. I chose walnut, which is hard to get good contrast on. I knew that going in and decided “to heck with it, however it turns out, that’s how it’s supposed to be”.
I’ll bet whoever receives that sign will think “super cool!” not “what’s with the light part?”
Also, context on that borax thing:
