Lesson Category: FiberMark

General Tab

We’ll start on the General tab.

First, at the top left corner of the driver you’ll find the “Resolution” settings, which can be set from 75 to 1200 DPI. The higher you set the resolution, the higher your engraving quality will be. Typically you will use 400 or 600 DPI for most materials you engrave.

The “Job Type” area is where you choose between Raster, Vector, or Combined modes, which includes both engraving and cutting within the same job.

The “Raster Setting” area is where you will set your speed and power settings, from 1 to 100%. You can find suggested speeds and powers for different materials in your manual.

The “Engrave Direction” setting can be set to Top-Down or Bottom-Up by clicking the arrow button or using the drop-down menu.

The “Image Dithering” setting is a drop-down menu where you can choose between different ways for the laser to interpret the dot pattern in your file. There are three clipart modes: Standard, Brighten, and Low Res when running lower resolution images. The next three modes, Floyd Steinberg, Jarvis, and Stucki are all used for different types of photographs.

Next, you can set your Vector settings. Start with your speed and power settings, setting each from 1 to 100%.

The Vector frequency setting ranges from 1 to 100. This is the pulsing rate as well as the average output power per pulse of the laser. When engraving or etching metal materials, lower frequency settings will produce a darker mark, while a high frequency will produce the best quality mark on plastics.

The “Vector Sorting” checkbox will determine the order of your cut lines. With Vector Sorting off, the laser will cut in the order that your objects or lines were created.

In the drop-down box, you can select the sorting mode. It is set to “Optimize” as a default. Selecting “Inside-Out” sorting will first cut out the most interior items, then outer ones. For example, the letter O will first cut the interior circle, followed by the outer one.

Selecting “Optimize” sorting chooses the next closest starting node.

The “Piece Size” setting is where you will set your page size dimensions to match the page size of your design.

The Center-Engraving checkbox will enable the center-engraving features of the laser. Choose your new home position and the laser will center your engraving around that position. You can choose between left-center, top-center, page-center, and center-center positioning.

Now you can choose whether to send the job to directly to the laser…

…or to send the job to the Job Manager by checking ‘Send to Manager’ for quick access later.

Color Mapping Tab

Next, we’ll move on to the Color Mapping tab.

Color Mapping lets you set different speeds and powers to different colors within your artwork. Click the checkbox to enable the “Color Mapping” settings.

Change the speed, power, frequency, and focus for each color.

When you’re done adjusting your settings, click the right arrow to apply your new settings.

Advanced Tab

Finally, we’ll look at the Advanced tab in the driver.

The “Configurations” area of the driver allows you to save and access material and job settings. When your settings are perfect for a project, save them for the next time you need to run that job. You can also load our suggested material settings for materials into the driver from the driver download page on our website.

When you receive a notification of a firmware update on your system, select the “Update Firmware” checkbox, then load the file to start the firmware installation process.

For users that prefer the Legacy print driver Epilog has provided, select the “Classic UI” checkbox.

Under Language, you can change the language displayed on the print driver.

This was a basic overview of the Epilog FiberMark print driver. When you are done adjusting your settings, click the OK button to print the job to the laser or to send it to the Job Manager.

Go Button

The first button on the control panel is the green Go key. Pressing this button starts or resumes a job. Once the job starts, the display changes to show a job timer and the engraving resolution. The timer is a useful production tool that displays the elapsed time of engraving.

Pause Button

This is the pause button that pauses the lens carriage and the laser beam during a job. If the key is pressed during raster engraving, the lens carriage will stop on either the far left or right of the engraving line that is in process. In vector mode, the lens carriage will stop at the end of line segment or the next line node location.

Reset Button

Pressing the reset button will move the carriage back to its home position. It does not erase the job from the laser system’s memory; rather it will stop the engraving job in process and send the carriage back to its home position.

Set Home Button

This is the set home button. Pressing the Set Home key will set the current position as your temporary home position. This temporary home now becomes the new upper left corner of your page, or if you are using Center Engraving, your center position.

X/Y Off Button

The X/Y Off key disables the X and Y motors and allows you to move the carriage by hand to any location on the table. After pressing X/Y Off, press the Go button to disable the axis or the pause button to cancel the operation. Moving the carriage by hand lets you perform several functions, including manually focusing anywhere on the table, setting a temporary home position, and accurately determining the X and Y axis location. When you disable the axes and move the carriage by hand, the X and Y coordinates display on the LCD panel.

Red Dot Pointer

The Red Dot Pointer is a toggle switch that turns the laser system’s red dot pointer on or off. This is used for a visual representation of where the laser will fire or setting a custom home position. When active, the light will turn green.

Focus Button

Pressing the focus button allows you to raise or lower the table by pressing the up or down arrow keys. When in focus mode, the LCD displays a digital readout of the relative location of the table.

Arrow Keys

You can use the double triangle up and down arrows to quickly move the table up or down and the single triangle arrows for more precise table movement.

Frequency Button

The frequency button displays the raster frequency (RF) and vector frequency (VF). Pressing the up or down arrow key will increase or decrease the frequency output of the laser in raster mode.

Power Button

The power button works displays the power of the job sent to the laser. In raster mode you can adjust the power of the job by selecting the power button then pressing the up or down arrow. This can be performed on the fly as the laser runs. This is helpful when testing settings on a new material.

Speed Button

The speed button works identically to the power button. In raster mode you can adjust the speed of the job by selecting the speed button, then pressing the up or down arrow. This can be performed as the laser runs.

Configuration Button

The Configuration Button accesses many of the machine’s settings, including X home, Y home, rotary home, and much more. Scroll through these by pressing the down arrow key.

Jobs Button

Pressing the jobs button displays the file name of the last job stored in memory. After pressing the job key, press the up or down arrows to scroll through all jobs in the system.

Data Light

The data light will illuminate when a job is being received at the laser. Once the job has fully arrived at the laser, the light will turn off.

This was a quick walk through of the many functions available at your Epilog FiberMark system.

How do you know which DPI setting is right for your project?

Print quality is often determined by the resolution of an image, and is one of the main variables to consider when laser engraving. Resolution is expressed in DPI or dots per inch and is determined by the number of lines or dots that are engraved for every inch of movement. Each horizontal line of dots the laser produces is referred to as a raster line. A higher resolution selected in the print driver will make the dots engrave closer together, and will produce a higher quality result.

Although resolution does play a big part in engraving quality, keep in mind that engraving resolution is only one factor in determining image quality. The focus, brightness, and contrast elements of an image can have greater influence on the look of the final engraving than resolution alone. If low-quality artwork is used, even the highest resolution setting in the print driver will not improve the engraving. Also, keep in mind that image quality is subjective. Engraving a project at 300 DPI may be just fine for some images and customers, while 600 DPI is required as the absolute minimum for others.

These 3 examples exhibit qualities that will not produce the best engraving results.

The first example is a photograph taken at an event where the overall light is too bright and includes a very hazy look.

The second example is a low resolution logo provided as a 72 DPI image, rather than as vector artwork or in a vector format. 72 DPI is too low a resolution for a logo engraving project. It’s best to receive logo artwork as a vector image when possible.

And the third example is of a photograph that is very dark and includes very little contrast. These three photos illustrate some of the image issues that cannot be fixed with resolution settings alone at the laser.

Now we’ll discuss a bit more about how DPI works at the laser. This diagram shows the concept of raster lines and dots-per-inch (DPI), and the difference in dot density between 75, 300, and 600 DPI. Each dot represent a laser pulse, and the arrows represent the change in direction of the optics assembly for each raster line. Note how sparse the dots are at 75 DPI, and how the dots are very close and overlapping at 600 DPI.

How Resolution Affects a Job’s Completion Time

Generally, the time it takes to complete an engraving job is significantly affected by resolution. The higher the resolution, the more time it will take to complete an engraving job. While a higher resolution setting does increase the time it takes to complete an engraving, it allows you to achieve greater depth in materials like wood and rubber without having to reduce the speed of the laser. High resolution is also ideal for highly detailed wood engraving, such as the Epilog Aztec Calendar, and rubber stamps, which typically include small typefaces, intricate details, and more depth in the recessed areas.

There will be times when your customer requests a large number of pieces, and it will be important to minimize the time spent completing the job, without sacrificing quality. Optimizing a projects DPI by selecting a lower resolution will help reduce engraving time and increase profits.

These tiger photo engravings on anodized aluminum show the quality difference at 300, 400, and 600 DPI. Out of these examples, you can see the 600 DPI engraving produced a high-quality engraving and took 2 min and 44 secs to complete. But, the 400 DPI result is nearly just as good, and only took 1:49 seconds to complete.

As an example, if a customer ordered 100 of these tiger cards, then completing the 100 cards at 600 DPI would take around 4 hrs and 35 minutes to be completed, but engraving the project at 400 DPI would allow you to complete the project in just over 3 hours.

Combining DPI and Dithering Pattern for More Time Savings

There are other techniques to save you time without sacrificing engraving quality. Your Epilog Laser machine includes dithering pattern options, which eliminate the perceivable dot pattern you see when engraving at lower resolutions with the Standard dithering option.

In this example, note the dot pattern in the engraving on the left and the absence of the perceivable dot pattern in the example on the right. Each of these engravings were produced using 300 DPI, and the time to complete them was the same, but the one on the left was engraved using the Standard dithering pattern, while the engraving of the right was completed with the Stucki Dithering pattern.

Utilizing Epilog’s Stucki Dithering setting and engraving at 300 DPI produces a high-quality result similar to the 600 DPI, and also provides a large time saving advantage.

Applying this combination of settings to the previous project example of engraving 100 tiger cards, the engraving project would take only 2 hours and 17 minutes to complete, further increasing the time savings and profitability of this project.

As a final example and to further illustrate how DPI effects engraving, we’ve used a 50-watt Helix to engrave a grayscale clip art image, with settings of 45 percent speed and 100 percent power. The only thing that changed between each engraving is the resolution.

When it comes to settings and the final results of a project it can come down to a matter of personal preference as to which resolution looks better, but these photos show the dramatic difference resolution can make, especially when engraving grayscale images.

Matching Resolution Settings to Your Material

We recommend consulting your manual or the included material settings installed with your machine driver and the Epilog Job Manager.

75-200 DPI

Resolution settings in this range are typically used for non-production purposes where you want to experiment with image engraving location, or if you want to quickly produce a rough draft engraving. A low resolution can also be useful when engraving products that don’t require much material to be removed during engraving, such as fabric.

300 DPI

300 DPI is a versatile sweet spot for laser engraving. This setting is useful when engraving materials such as wood, glass, marble, plastic and other items that don’t benefit from the engraved dots being close together.

400 DPI

This resolution value is ideal for many applications. It combines very good image quality with fast engraving times. Many users like 400 DPI for all of their work.

600 DPI

600 DPI provides fine detail, depth, or is useful when high-end results are required.

1200 DPI

1200 DPI resolution is used for projects that require the best engraving quality possible, when engraving extremely small fonts, or when depth of engraving is the goal.

Things to Remember

• When it comes to settings and the look of the final result, personal preference is something to consider, but also try to minimize the time it takes to complete a project when possible.
• When experimenting with new products and materials, make sure to have extras on hand for dialing in the best settings and results.
• Be sure to consult your manual as a starting point for materials settings, and also utilize the epiloglaser.com website as a resource for additional product ideas and materials settings. We provide Sample Club articles monthly, and you can sign up to receive them at www.epiloglaser.com/resources/enews-signup.htm.