More uniform engrave on small font Advice?

[cindyhodesigns]

Any tips on getting a uniform engrave on a font that has thin parts? The W U C and N is not as uniform. Should I increase the DPI? Go high Def?

This is on proofgrade maple

[todd.hassell]

What about Bold-ing the font?

[Jules]

You can also do a light score in addition to the engrave.

[cindyhodesigns]

So thicker would be better? I’ll try that!

[cindyhodesigns]

That’s a great idea too! Thanks! I was in a paradigm

[jbmanning5]

Slow it down (decrease power accordingly). I regularly do very small text but for it to engrave well, I slow down to about 400.

[geek2nurse]

What @jbmanning5 said. Or, peel off the masking before engraving.

[shop]

is that a vector or a bitmap. it almost looks like it’s a bitmap that isn’t high enough res to engrave well.

[cindyhodesigns]

This is a vector. I dont like using bitmaps for that reason. I know it’s a combination of speed and size that is contributing to the problem. But I’ll work on it as I really want to make this piece!

[cindyhodesigns]

OMG my 5 min project ended up as an afternoon of trial and error Happy how it turned out!

[bill_laba]

Glad it worked out. Even though you spent the afternoon on it, you got the results you wanted and learned a lot to get quick results on the next project. I’m sure DaVinci practiced a lot before painting the Mona Lisa.

[raymondking32]

I would also increase the LPI up from the default. I was having a similar issue, but didn’t want to increase the size of the letters. The increase was enough for me.

When I didn’t mind adding a bolder look, I just increased the path size accordingly, but that’s also my only easy option when using vetain fonts, since not all font files come with a bold option

[cindyhodesigns]

Hehe…its one of those things you think it’s easy as I made many things this size but this is the first one I did something with small font. And of course it’s one if my favourite words of advice I get frustrated with

[cindyhodesigns]

I found increasing the LPI didn’t improve it to what I was looking for. What worked was a light score adjusted to the laser kerf so it ran just inside the boundary of the letters.

[ptodd]

Happy cake day!

[mpipes]

Generally for improving quality, lowering speed would be the prioritized option. Because speed is different, power and LPI may also need adjustment.

Here’s a link that gives some guidelines to manual settings:

https://glowforge.com/support/topic/first-three-prints/working-with-manual-mode