Trying to engrave but it keeps engraving so "blotchy"

This is the image I am trying to engrave:

This is how it keeps engraving:
68487778_2162415464055494_6329484228849303552_n

I know its my settings, how i have the image saved or both … what am i doing wrong with this image from inkscape to GF?

I think it’s your material. Notice how the grain resists the engrave.

Looks like pine, you might want to search the forum for pine settings… but tbh the rest of your engrave already looks a little overpowered, so I’m not sure that more power is the key here.

If you want specific settings discussions, you should move the topic to beyond the manual, that’s where settings discussions are a free-for-all. To do that, you click on the pencil next to the title of the post, then select the new topic from the dropdown. Once you do that, we can go into specifics a bit more.

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The wood is pine. It was just what I had lying around to run some “Tests” on. The actual wood I want to engrave is the “lid” of an old wine barrel so I was trying to do some runs before putting the actual piece in there… Thanks for the input!

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Convert the image to B&W, 1-bit/pixel, no greyscale, and see if that fixes it.

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Your end result also looks out of focus. Did you use “set focus” to get the material height dialed in?

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@mdelima6710, first welcome to the forum! Did you get this figured out yet? I did a quick test on MDF and it came out crisp and clean without any adjustment to the pic so that narrows it down to a setting and/or focus issue on your end. FWIW, I do pine at was 80 power full speed with sucess.

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I think something is wrong with the focus. A few possibilities like not getting the material height figured or lens in upside down.

Are you engraving without the crumb tray? Looks to me like the thickness of the material is set wrong (or the lens is in backwards). If you are not using the crumb tray the top of the material must be at least as high as where the crumb tray was. The lens only has a half inch of focus adjustment so the material must be placed within that half inch focus window. Use the set focus function after getting the material within the focus window to have the GF set things for the sharpest engrave.

All it well! It wasnt my file. It was the cheap pine (soft) wood I was trying to do a practice engrave on. I finally just put my oak lid in there (with no crumb tray) and it worked like a charm. Only part I messed up was lining up the image (I had to do a split image since it was too big). It was a project for my dad and he loves it so I’m happy. Thanks for the help/suggestions everyone!

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