Messages

61

General Mach Discussion / Re: PicEngrave & Impact Engraving

« on: September 16, 2016, 09:32:14 AM »

Increasing the DPI using GIMP, but it affects the size of the image, so that I have to scale it again using PEP. Played with Atkinson but it doesn't give what I want.

Dan

62

General Mach Discussion / Re: PicEngrave & Impact Engraving

« on: September 16, 2016, 08:31:03 AM »

Is it possible to control the resolution of dithering? I am now able to get fair results, but would like higher resolution. I am trying to engrave an image on a small pendant so the image size is about 25x25mm (1"x1"), but after the image is scaled down to this size and I perform dithering, the dots I get are very coarse and the image looks poor. With a larger image the dots remain the same size, but considering the larger image size it looks fine.

Dan

63

General Mach Discussion / Re: PicEngrave & Impact Engraving

« on: September 15, 2016, 12:41:56 AM »

That is nice, but I am not familiar with UCCNC and won't be changing over from Mach3 to something that isn't proven in my opinion.

Dan

64

General Mach Discussion / Re: PicEngrave & Impact Engraving

« on: September 14, 2016, 12:44:11 PM »

Yes.

65

General Mach Discussion / Re: PicEngrave & Impact Engraving

« on: September 14, 2016, 12:39:15 PM »

Here it is.

66

General Mach Discussion / Re: PicEngrave & Impact Engraving

« on: September 14, 2016, 12:15:49 PM »

The version I have does have the variable feedrate option. I will play to see what I can get out of it without the head first...

Dan

67

General Mach Discussion / Re: PicEngrave & Impact Engraving

« on: September 14, 2016, 11:26:26 AM »

You were right Jeff - the image I attached above was not good. I did it with PEP and saved it and then subsequently was opening it and trying to produce Gcode, but apparently it was not dithered properly. I did it again and now the Gcode looks better - still not perfect for impact engraving I think as it doesn't separate the Z moves from the X and Y, but I will try to engrave and see what a result I will get.

Do you know anyone who tried to use PEP with one of those engraving attachments? I understand that to use it this way, you have to use "variable feed rate" mode, but my question is what happens if you have a clear white colour on the picture - you can't have a high enough feedrate to not leave any marks on the workpiece...

Thanks,
Dan

68

General Mach Discussion / Re: PicEngrave & Impact Engraving

« on: September 14, 2016, 09:27:41 AM »

Jeff, I just re-read your previous posts above and I now understand. I were saying that the only way PEP can do impact engraving is by using one of those heads. While I kept trying to get out of it a Gcode similar to what DotG does, which doesn't require any special tools and its output Gcode looks like this:

G0 X5.1 Y0 Z1
G1 Z-0.7 F1200
G0 Z1
G0 X5.4 Y0 Z1
G1 Z-0.7 F1200
G0 Z1
G0 X5.7 Y0 Z1
G1 Z-0.7 F1200

Thanks,
Dan

69

General Mach Discussion / Re: PicEngrave & Impact Engraving

« on: September 14, 2016, 09:19:27 AM »

Attached is the image I am trying to generate Gcode for. And here is how the Gcode I am getting looks like with the above settings:

X3.48 Y0 Z-0.0027
X3.6 Y0 Z-0.0027
X3.72 Y0 Z-0.1071
X3.84 Y0 Z-0.6478
X3.96 Y0 Z-0.5243
X4.08 Y0 Z-0.2114
X4.2 Y0 Z-0.571
X4.32 Y0 Z-0.1839
X4.44 Y0 Z-0.4886
X4.56 Y0 Z-0.2086
X4.68 Y0 Z-0.5627

As you can see, it's not suitable for impact engraving where there should be only two modes for Z axis - impact/clearance.

Dan

70

General Mach Discussion / Re: PicEngrave & Impact Engraving

« on: September 14, 2016, 08:38:52 AM »

No exactly - I am getting the whole range of Z moves as if the image was not 1-bit, but rather grayscale.

Dan