This is the presentation done at the ARA on Wednesday Feb 23 2011

1. Presented by Mike Clarke

2. Who is Mike Clarke
 40 years in the awards and engraving
business
 Manufacturers Rep since 1988
 Has been selling lasers since 1991
 Have been using CorelDraw since 1991
 Featured writer for the Engravers
Journal
 Constantly calling on Engravers and
Trophy shops

3.  My lines include
 Full line of Trophy Supplies such as
resins, glass, plaques, and acrylics
 Custom Castings
 Full Line of solid wood and custom
manufacturing
 Full line of engraving
equipment, sublimation and engraving
supplies

4. My email is
mike@engrave.ca

5. My website is
www.engrave.ca

6. Rules of the seminar
 I will be working in X5
 I am getting older so my memory is
fading
 Questions are allowed. Please do not
hesitate to ask if something is not clear
 Oohs and aahs are allowed

7. My Overall Object
 Is to make you a better laser engraver
 I can only do this when you understand
your laser and how it works
 You can be an expert at CorelDraw but if
you do not know your laser you will
never show your work to its fullest
potential unless you learn your laser

8. Overview of this Seminar
 Make you understand your laser better
 To understand how your laser and your
material interact
 To make you more efficient with your
laser
 Give you a better understanding of your
laser and CorelDraw

9. What are we trying to accomplish
with our laser today
 What we need to know to make sure our
laser machine is setup properly
 How is the proper way to test your
material
 Why is resolution important to know
 Some important characteristics of
materials – ie course and fine
 Speeding up your workflow

10. Most Important
 What I want to show you today and in
tomorrow’s seminar is how to try
minimize the amount of wastage of
material
 I have spent countless hours destroying
product for the sake of trying to come up
with the best settings
 I have spent countless amounts of
money

11.  Last week for example I spent $100 in
marble to test out a new feature I
wanted to try in Photo Paint
 I do not want you to make the same
mistakes I made
 Just remember what I tell you is a
staring point for you. You need to
practice a certain amount to become
proficient in what you are lasering

13. 3 Important points that need to be
stressed when working with your
laser
 Make sure that your laser machine is
clean and in proper setup
 Never Trust what your laser
manufacturer says in terms of powers
and speeds
 TEST TESTTEST. Successful laser
engravers test the materials that they
want to work with

15. Keep our optics clean

16. Cleaning our Optics
 Check your lens and mirrors twice a day
– especially until you figure out what is a
good schedule
 Look for dirt and scratches
 Use cleaner supplies supplied by your
laser manufacturer
 Use good quality cue tips
 Dirty lens and mirrors will reduce your
power

17. Bad Spot in the Lens

18. Clean Mirror

19. Coating is coming of the mirrors

22. Ruler Alignment
 Make sure that your machine is level
 You rulers need to be square with your
beam so that your plates engrave where
they are suppose to engrave
 The last thing that you want to happen is
to have your machine cutting your rulers
instead of your material

23. Draw a Cross Hair in
CorelDraw

24. Ruler Alignment

27. Beam Alignment

28. How do we know the beam is not
aligned
 If you find that the engraving on one
side of you table seems to be a lot
stronger or weaker than the other side

29. Beam Alignment Video

30. Make sure that our table is level

32.  A laser engraver is in peak operating
condition when the beam is consistent
all around the table. That means that if
you have a 25 watt laser the measured
power from the top left side should be
close to the same power at the bottom
right side or the opposite corner from
where the laser enters the can (Laser)

33.  If you have two tables the second is
probably a cutting table make sure that
the table is level from one side to the
other. An uneven table will cause power
inconsistencies from one end of the
table to the other.

34.  If you want to maximize your laser and
produce a consistent and good quality
product you need to make sure that your
machine is in top running condition.
 What I will tell you today will require that
your machine is running at its peak
performance

35.  If your machine is not running properly
than your engraving will be at best
inconsistent and thus the product that
you put out will not be the best that it
can be

37. Working with Resolution
 One of the things that I preach to my
customers is that you do not always
have to use the default resolution that
your laser is set to.
 Why is this? Most laser manufacturers
want you to always produce high quality
images on your laser. Because this is
their goal than they will set their
resolutions to reflect this goal.

38. Default Driver Setup

39.  The manufacturer always sets the
resolution higher so that the quality is
the best it can be. Thus instead of trying
to explain why your need to use different
resolutions than the default setting is left
high. For this reason the engraving
quality is good but the speed is not
 My rule for setting resolution is that you
should always use a lower resolution
unless your really need a higher
resolution

40. Photographs Line Screen

41. To high of a resolution can hurt
the quality of your image

42. 400 and 1200 DPI Photos
1200 DPI Photo 400 DPI Photo

43. When you are lasering images
such as text and line art at letter
heights of a quarter of an inch
than a lower resolution is not as
noticeable but to you the time
saving can be enormous

44. Going from 600 to 400 Dpi can
increase your job time savings
as much as 30 percent

45. Different Resolutions on Plastic

46. You may notice a little
degradation in the images in
the past slide. This is more to
the fact that we are zoomed in
on the image as opposed to
what you can see with your eye

47. Different Resolutions on Wood

48. The only issue that we see with
line art style text and logos
engraving different resolutions
on wood is that at the same
power and speed a higher
resolution will yield a deeper
and thus darker image

49. Here are some photos

50. 200 DPI

51. 300 DPI

52. 400 DPI

53. 600 DPI

54. Photos
 In the case of this wood the higher the
resolution the better the image is and
the more contrast that we can get which
gives us a good looking image

55.  Sometimes images lasered at lower
resolutions are better than using higher
resolutions. Thermark images are like
that. Also Oak Plaques
 Monochrome images do not suffer
degradation when we are lowering the
resolutions

56. Monochrome Images

57. So What is Resolution?

58. What is Resolution
continued
 Printing resolution is the number of
printed dots that are found in an inch
box. For example if we are looking at a
printing resolution of 600 DPI than we
are printing 600 dots in the Y (down)
direction and 600 dots in the X (across)
direction. The lower the number the less
resolution that we are using in an image.
 Remember that a laser engraver is the
same as your laser printer

59.  The difference between resolution printing on
a normal ink jet or laser printer is that the
printed dots are smaller. Because of the
smallness of the dots a higher resolution will
typically yield a better printed image. On a
laser some lasers can create some very small
dots but the problem in a lot of cases is our
material. If our material is coarse than our
image will be coarse. Materials such as wood
(especially oak) are coarse and thus high
resolutions are not as noticeable on them and
in a lot of cases higher resolutions can ruin
you image on these materials

60.  The important factor to remember is that
your laser machine produces a certain size
of spot size. For example my machine
produces a 1 thou spot size. However that
1 thou spot size may become 10 thou on
my material because of what we call dot
gain. If we place to many dots in that inch
box you will start to get a lot of overlap by
the burning dots.
 What you end up with is a massive of blob
 So a higher resolution is not always the
best

61. Way To Much Power

62. The more dots there are
the more power you are
going to inflict on your
material. I say inflict
because to much power is
literally going to destroy
your job

63. When do we need a higher
resolution?
 If you are producing grayscale photos in
a line screen
 If you are producing large fonts on high
contrast products such as laser
engraving plastic
 If you want deep engraving such as
what you get when you are engraving
into wood

64. A high resolution produces more power
and thus can warp material

66. Why do we want to use a lower
resolution
 It is faster plain and simple. If we
engrave a job and it takes 4 minutes are
600 DPI the same job at 300 Dpi will
take 2 minutes
 50 % less where and tear on our
machine
 Less power when we are engraving.
Sometimes this will yield a better image

67.  In this time of increasing costs we need
to be always looking at saving money.
The one way we can save money is by
increasing the output of our operation
 It is funny but I have been in this
industry for 38 years. In the old days the
was engraving. For those that remember
we relied on the manual engraving
machine

68.  With the advent of the computerized
engraver the bottleneck in a lot of shops
became the trophies or the finishing of
our product
 With the advent of Resins figures our
bottleneck has become engraving again
 The laser has sped this process up but
we still need to increase our production

69.  As far as I am concerned labor costs are
one of the highest costs we deal with.
The more we can speed up our labor
process the more we can control costs.
 Many materials such as plastics with
adhesives on it can speed our
production up
 Paring down our resolution can also
greatly speed up our job and thus help
cut costs

71. Lasered Dot looks Oval

72. Types of Lens

74. 2 inch Lens
 2.0 Inch Lens
 Standard lens on most laser systems.
 Multipurpose for both engraving and
cutting applications.
 Recommended for raster engraving from
300 DPI to 600 DPI resolutions.
 Produces a spot size of 0.004 to 0.007
inches in diameter.

75. 1.5 inch Lens
 1.5 Inch Lens
 Optional lens for “High Resolution”
engraving.
 Recommended for raster engraving above
600 DPI resolutions.
 Recommended for small font or fine detail
engraving.
 Produces a spot size of 0.003 to 0.0065
inches in diameter.
 Good cutting lens for thin (<=1/16 inch)
material.

76. 4 inch lens
 4.0 Inch Lens
 Produces focused beam over longer
vertical distance.
 Specialty lens typically used for
engraving within recessed area (bowl or
plate).
 Used for cutting thick materials.

77. Table of Lens

78. Collimator
 A Rounder Spot: A spot size that is as close to
circular as possible produces laser characteristics
that are the same in both the X and Y
directions, providing crisper, more consistent
engraving and cutting profiles.
 More Uniform Spot Over the Entire Work Area:
Because all CO2 laser beams diverge after they
leave the laser tube, the beam can actually change
shape from one end of the work table to the other.
Epilog's Radiance technology produces the most
uniform spot in the industry and is incorporated as
standard equipment on the Mini 24, Helix and
Legend 36EXT.

79. Collimator
 Smaller Spot Size: A smaller spot means
you can produce finer detail in engraving
and cutting applications. Just look at the
detail in some of our samples - it's truly
amazing!
 Higher Power Density: When a laser beam
is focused to a smaller spot, its power
density goes up because you have the
same amount of power in a smaller area.
This helps produce a deeper, darker mark
and is beneficial in virtually every
engraving and cutting application.