Troubleshooting guide

8-4 Special Applications Guide
The laser system can print all three types of bitmaps providing that either the driver or the
bitmap image-processing program converts the grayscale and/or color bitmaps into a
monochrome bitmap. Essentially, the laser system is a monochromatic printer, either it fires the
beam to burn a dot or it does not fire the beam to leave an empty dot on the material.
There are several different, bitmap storage formats available: TIF, BMP, PCX, and others. We
prefer to use the TIFF format because it is most widely used format. The format makes no
difference to the laser system. The difference in formats involves how they are stored on your
computer’s hard disk. Bitmaps cannot be edited in most graphics software. Some basic
functions such as cropping, scaling, or mirroring might be possible but it is usually necessary to
use a bitmap image processing software to perform a dot by dot editing, rotation, or scaling of
the bitmap.
Monochrome Bitmaps
If you scan the image in monochrome (black and white) mode, set your scanner to at least 600
DPI. The higher the DPI, the smoother the image will be. Scanning monochrome images at
300 DPI is the minimum recommended resolution but scanning them at 600 DPI will provide a
significant improvement in the image quality. Clean it up in your bitmap image-processing
program and save it to your hard disk. You can now either print the image directly from your
bitmap image processing program, or import the bitmap into a graphics program and print it
from there. Monochrome bitmaps are engraved in the same manner as black filled text. The
black area will turn the laser on and the white area turns the laser off.
Grayscale Bitmaps
When scanning image in the grayscale mode, you should scan the image at no more than 300
DPI. Scanning at a higher DPI does not improve image quality but it consumes more memory
and will take longer to print. Grayscale images cannot be printed directly to the laser system.
Since the laser system actually works like a black and white printer, grayscale images must be
converted into a black and white images. To do this, either the driver will do it automatically or
you can convert the grayscale image to a black and white image in your bitmap image-
processing program.
The two, primary grayscale image conversion techniques are Halftone or Error Diffusion. The
printer driver can print either one and it is selected in the driver under the “Graphics” tab.
Please refer to the section on the printer driver for more details on how to set these parameters.
Since the driver has a fixed method of conversion, you may want to experiment by using your
bitmap image-processing program to make the conversion. These software programs usually
have more options for controlling the size, angle, shape, and the amount of black and white dots
(pixels) created when converting the image. Experiment with all of the controls to see which
looks the best. Big dots look good on some materials and small dots look better on others.
Once the image is converted by your program, save it and either print it directly from that
program or import it into your graphics program and print it from there. Essentially, a Halftone
image and an Error Diffusion image are actually both monochrome images and can be treated
as such. If you decide not convert the grayscale image to a monochrome image in your bitmap
image editing program, then the driver will do it automatically and will use settings based on the
Resolution settings in the driver.