Joe,

First off Alumamark is a very picky material 1% power difference can change the look.

I know it requires very low power to change it to black. Using the 100 watt system may not be the best method.

If this is the X2 model with two 50 watt lasers unplug the bottom laser tube and use just one tube. You will probably have better success running Alumamark.

What we do is to draw 2" x .25" rectangles just duplicate 8 and fill each one a different color starting with black and going in the order of the driver. start out with 7% power at 100% speed and then change the following colors up by 2% (Red 9%, green 11%) continue until you have changed all of the colors.

Now print the file from here you will have to pick the two that are the blackest marks.

Keep those power settings the same and adjust the speeds down by 1%.

You will soon find a power and speed that works the best save it and you will be able to use it from that point on.

Also use a PPI setting of 1000 and image density of 5 do not set the image enhancements when finding the power setting. However once you determine the proper setting then enable the enhancements and save the settings.

Joe, Which color Alumamark? I found (by total mistake) that I only get good black lettering on the silver if it is about 1/8" out of focus. So I set my manual focus on a small sample piece of acrylic, then laser the silver and it comes out great. If I set the focus for the actual thickness of the alumamark it comes out a dull gray or brownish. I have a 25w Universal, I use the settings of 50p 50s.

Harold

Bieb,

I took Mike's advise in the first response to this post. I set all the colors in the print driver to setting of 2% power difference for each color and burned 2"x 3/4" boxes and picked the best result. I've had lousy luck in the past with the silver. I got great results with the gold. I'm going to go through the same setting process with the siver and see what settings are best. Turns out with my 1oow setting of 9% power and 99% speed is optimum at 1000 ppi and a density setting of 5. I'll let you know on the silver later today.

I've had my own share of mishaps with alumamark, it's a really delicate product to engrave, but once I got it engraving alright it's been very popular with the clientelle. I took the advice from the brochure that came with it when i bought it from johnson plastics and it worked just fine for me with the ULS 25e running at 55pwr and 80spd 500dpi.

Bieb you should check this very interesting post about true focus distance;
http://engravingetc.org/forum/index.php?webtag=EE&msg=1672.5