HistoryBuff.com is a nonprofit organization. I am attempting to produce a "printing plate" for a mid-1800s woodcut engraving. I've scanned an original printed woodcut, and then spent many hours in PhotoShop making each line more distinct and removing "artifacts" to simplify the cuts made by the router. My first attempt I set the plunge to 1/32 inch. When testing a small portion it virtually wiped out the line distinctions as lines were so close together. I then went into a portion of the woodcut and removed every other line to make more space between lines. Next, I set the plunge depth to only 1/64 inch and it still wipes out the lines. I purchased the Amana In-Groove CNC Insert Engraving Tool Body & Knives 8 pc. Set and tried the smallest blade with a 0.005 point.
Or would the photograving software work better for this work?
I've attached below my sample image that I used to try the 0.005 point tip blade on. The lower left corner of the image is where I removed every other line to see if it improved the output.
I think you need to approach this type of project as a photo, and not something you are going to vcarve. You might want to do a search though on the Vectric forum for woodcut or engraving and see if there's anyone else who's done this in the past and if so, how they did it - and also pose your question there.
In the meantime, I loaded your image in Photo VCarve and got this sort of outcome by using some default settings.
Image using Photo VCarve
You can download a fully functional trial version of PVC from the Vectric site and try some things out to see before you buy. I think the most favorable price you'll find for it though will be with the Next Wave store - as they have worked out a price for Shark owners.
