Specifications

GRAPHICS SOFTWARE SETUP
Section 3-13
Engrave it with the settings determined in step one but this time ENABLE Image Enhancement and set
CONTRAST to 0, DEFINITION to 0, DENSITY to 100 and the TUNING value to +4. You should expect
the results to appear fuzzy, having parts of the characters missing, and overall engraving quality to be not
as good as expected. This is normal. Move the line of text, slightly downward in your graphics software
so that you will engrave a clean part of the material but keeping it close enough to the previous engraving
so that you have something to compare it to. Keep engraving samples and adjusting the CONTRAST
upwards in increments of 5 and note the results. The objective is to adjust the CONTRAST just enough to
cause the high density areas of the text to be sharp and clear. Ignore the appearance of the ascenders
(like quotation marks or the tops of h’s) and decenders (like commas or the bottom of lower case p’s) as
they will appear faint and unclear. This is to be expected. DO NOT adjust the CONTRAST setting to try to
force these to appear, we will use the DEFINITION adjustment for those. Right now, ONLY concentrate
on the high density part of the characters. Setting CONTRAST too high can cause the characters to
appear “fat” or “bold”. Adjusting the CONTRAST by just one number can make a big difference in
appearance so continue adjusting the setting by first incrementing in 5’s until you get close, but then fine
tune the setting by incrementing or decrementing by 1’s until the exact setting is achieved.
Step 3:
Adjusting DEFINITION to enhance the ascenders and decenders.
Now, increase the DEFINITION in increments of 5 at a time until the ascenders, decenders, commas,
quotation marks and any other low density area characters begin to appear. The objective is to increase
the setting just enough to cause these parts of the graphic to match the appearance of the high density
areas. Setting the DEFINITION too high will result in ascenders and decenders appearing too “fat” or
“bold” compared to the rest of the graphic.
Step 4:
Reducing DENSITY as needed.
Once CONTRAST and DEFINITION have been set to the appropriate levels, the graphic may or may not
appear to be “fat” or “bold”. In most cases, the appearance will look great without making any more
adjustments. However, if everything appears overpowered or bold, try reducing the DENSITY down from
100 in increments of 5 and note the results. If the characters begin appear to be “chunky” or appear as if
pixels have been eliminated, then you have reduced it too much. Normally you can leave the DENSITY at
100. However, there may be cases where you need to reduce it. Reducing DENSITY can be very useful
when the image is inverted such as white text with a black background. In this case, if the engraved area
(the background) is overpowering the text (foreground) then reducing the DENSITY may help thicken the
text.
TUNING
Step 5: Fine tuning the raster strokes.
At this point, we are finished with Image Enhancements. Make sure that you save your settings. But your
graphic may need a little more “fine tuning”. The typical TUNING setting is +4 when Image Enhancement
is enabled. However, this may or may not be the best setting for your system. To check this setting, you
should perform this last test. Engrave the same text, with all your Image Enhancement settings but this
time set the TUNING value to 0. Then move the graphic down and engrave it again with TUNING setting
+1, then +2 and so forth all the way to +8. Compare each one to the other and find the one that is the
sharpest and clearest. Go back and set the TUNING value to the appropriate number and SAVE your
settings once again.
The Image Enhancement settings for that material are now complete. If you feel that you can “tweak” it a
little more, go back to step 2 and try again, but this time start with your current Image Enhancement
settings that you saved. It is not necessary to reset your nominal power setting and we recommend that
you leave it the same as the value you determined in step 1.
Setting the Image Enhancement parameters using this procedure will cause all of your graphics, whether
big or small, inverted or not, dense or highly detailed, to appear better than ever. We suggest that you
run this procedure for all your materials and save your parameters. This may sound like a big job, but the
additional productivity and engraving quality that your system is capable of producing is well worth the
small amount of time spent.