So has the engraving capabilities been figured out yet? I am so excited, I have designed about 5 things to be cut already and was hoping for a little clarity, if possible. Will it work like a grayscale topo, assigning deepest burn values to the darkest grays, lightest to lights, etc? Do you know the approximate depth that can be burned from a typical piece of MDF or Birch on one pass? Are we talking 1/16" or 1/100"?
Thanks.
Exactly that. Max depth is the cutting capability of the machine - so for many materials you could engrave 1/4" in a pass! Albeit very slowly. : )
Dan, I think we’d love to see an example if you have time to carve one for us.
If I understand you right, then something like this image:
Should be able to work as a height map for the engraving. Would it be possible for you to try engraving that onto a corner of some MDF or similar “uniform” material? I assume that would give the best case for an optimal result.
Thanks again for your involvement with these community forums, your being here to answer questions and provide samples has been a great incentive for me to pre-order.
It’s one of my favorite parts of the day - seeing all the amazing stuff that people are dreaming up.
Greyscale isn’t demo ready yet. Long story but the power boards we’ve designed aren’t cleared for use yet, so we have to use 3rd party power supplies, and we don’t have software control over beam intensity on those. And for those of you who were a part of the “what went wrong on the first day of makerfaire” thread… yes, what happened was that a power spike blew out the 3rd party power supplies. Ours have better input filtering! But we couldn’t use them there. Sigh.
Anyway, when we get the production power supplies fully ready to go, I’m excited to do some greyscale engraving for all of you.
Hey @dan, just checking back on this. Any word on the new power boards and their certification/clearance for testing and use?
Really looking forward to some greyscale samples. =)
Still waiting! Making a safe high voltage supply isn’t a walk in the park, but we’re pretty close 
*hops up and down like an excited three year old*
I understand the greyscale topo concept, where depth corresponds to shade. But what about just plain old greyscale with a consistent depth… like if I want to convert a photograph to, say, 256 shades of grey, and burn that as a flat image on a piece of wood or other material to get a decent shaded approximation of the original?
I suspect to not do a relief option what you want would be to dither the image and then use the raster on engrave. Dithering is the process that converts an image to an approximate density of dots.
see Wikipedia, fr an excellent sample image.
I was just hanging out with Chase Jarvis (http://www.chasejarvis.com/) today and we did some dithered prints of his photos. He was shooting video and I don’t know if they made it, but keep an eye on his blog… they look really cool.
Checking back in to see how the power supply work has progressed, @dan and @aeva.
I’ve looked through the other 3D raster engraving posts, but haven’t seen anything about current status or any sample cuts yet. Needless to say the anticipation is still eating away at me. =P
Answered this already in another thread - waiting on one component. @aeva just updated me together and said that, for the first time, it’s passing initial tests - so that’s a very good sign.
Stressful times but I have alot of faith in the GF team.
