Hey guys,
I’ve gone to laser training, but before I come in I was wondering if there are any materials I can check out online to get more comfortable with the hardware/software before coming in.
Thanks!
The closest thing we have is the laser wiki page. But it does not list specific materials and speed/power settings.
Best thing to do is hang out for a few hours and watch other people run the laser.
That’s great, thanks Lampy!
Are there more materials on using Retina Engrave? The wiki shows the basic steps for importing raster/vector and printing which is great, but we went over using different colors for different print settings, for instance, that I don’t see info on.
Alternatively if anyone has some awesome knowledge bombs they wouldn’t mind dropping on me sometime this week in the workroom that’d be awesome too! I’d like to test out my first cuts and it’d be cool to have someone with some experience around whose brain I could pick.
When John Gorman gave the class he had a powerpoint of Laser Cutter usage and recommendations. You could ask him.
I checked the .ppt that’s posted on the wiki and it does have some more information than I thought. It’s probably enough to get me started and poking around and I can sort it out… thanks!
If you want I can look over your shoulder tonight, and possibly give some
pointers on lasering with multiple colors.
That is how I made my monitors.
Prepping some files to work with for the cutter. The wiki presentation says that thickness of lines in vector files should be .005". Does anyone have a workflow for doing this?
It’s taking me a long time to get my images all setup. Any help would be much appreciated!
Here’s what I currently have. The idea is to cut out 4 of these to be the sides of a lantern cube.
I’ve imported this into Inkscape, then “Traced Bitmap” to turn it into vectors. However, the vectors are all curved and of different sizes. Hence my question!
You need to change the stroke width… And you might be able to do it for all selected items if you do ‘select all’ It might be easier to try on one vector first. right click, there should be an option for fill and stroke In my inkscape it pops up another tool area on the right hand side. Curious, How big will each pannel be?
Also part of the issue you are probably seeing is that when you convert the raster image to a vector in Inkscape, you actually get two lines as the vector is an outline. What you are seeing as different widths is really the two vector lines separated by the space of the original raster line. In Inkscape, if you go to View - Display Mode - Outline, you will see the two vectored lines.
Two get rid of the outline, you will either have to convert to vector using a different program that supports “center lining” or select the whole vectored image and select Path - Break Apart. Then you will have to go and manually delete one of each vectored lines. Unless of course someone has a better solution?
Ahh, yes. This makes sense. -_-
It actually won’t let me change the stroke width. It’s basically rendering them as polygons…
I guess my challenge here is that I’m converting from raster to vector. Perhaps I should just go with it being raster, and rather than cut it out of balsa wood I could etch into acrylic for a different effect.
Definitely experimenting here! I was thinking this would work with sides between 8-12".
Will either of ya’ll be around this evening?
I will not be around this evening, but might have a chance to swing by on thursday maybe… I think that vector is going to have the quickest ‘print time’ I’m a beginner in inkscape so i might be unaware of some neat feature that makes it easy… Over the weekend i used the paint bucket to my advantage to create vectors within existing enclosed shapes in inkscape… That way I didn’t have to draw things manually. I’m not sure if that helps at all in your case or not.
This seems like the best version I was able to pull from http://vectormagic.com but most of the gentle curves are lost in the process. SVG Download
If this is just the first image that you came across when trying to find something for the side of a box, I’d suggest looking at some other options (including over here http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:9452 and http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:60485 and http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:68919).
Also, searching using your input image came up with several nice designs that could be vectored. Image Search Results
-the purring dork
Personally, I’ve never seen any vector extraction from a raster that I was happy with. That image has a lot of radial symmetry, though, so it may be worthwhile to manually vector trace one pie slice of it and then duplicate it around the circle.
Joseph,
Thanks! I did what you said with Path > Break Apart, and it was actually fairly quick to just delete the interior vectors for those ‘polygons’ which were 100% closed.
If I export this as an .SVG, it should work pretty well for cutting yes? I think the ones that aren’t closed completely would still mostly cut and I could remove the rest with an xacto. Here is a snapshot:
Comter, thanks for all the help! I was able to get a similar image using Inkscape following what Joseph said. I was looking at a ton of different mandala-style images, but this was one of the few that works as a stencil (almost all others have overlapping polygons that when cut along the outlines will result in a loss of the design).
This “Small Box” project is perfect though!! That’s actually the same Islamic design that inspired the idea originally… I’ll test out this design and see what they did, too.
Cheers!
dan
Your welcome. It really wouldn’t be too much work to close in those
remaining vectors and delete the unwanted lines. If you cut it like this,
the ones that are still doubled will cut twice and appear darker than the
single lines.
I saw Ralph in the workshop last night, and he was cutting with doubled-up vectors like this with no problem (though this was for lettering). Like you said it will make them darker, though I think it will also increase the likelihood of some burn effects since it will pass over the same area twice.
I’ll go ahead and finish editing the image and cut with single outline! Now to figure out how to close a polygon in Inkscape…
Think I got it!! Here is a snapshot. These are all single outlines now, so my raster>vector conversion was successful!
The idea is for this to be the sides of a lantern, so this is kinda what it’s supposed to look like with a light inside it:
Now to start experimenting with cuts and materials. And I still need to sort out the best way to piece it together… but the hard part is done. Thanks all!
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Note that Inkscape has three different path creation options when you trace a bitmap. If you want to break the bitmap apart, you want the second or third option depending on your shape. If it’s complex, like a map of the United States, the middle option might trace the shape better, because it processes transparent or half-grey pixels, resulting in a smoother shape. The downside is it uses a LOT more nodes and could easily slow down Inkscape if you were to edit it.
It’s it’s a more basic shape, such as a checkerboard pattern or concentric circles, use the third option, then select Path -> Break Apart. This will give you a path for every shape Inkscape could determine… the downside is the paths generated this way are sometimes, depending on the pattern, completely solid and filled in. If that happens,paths generated this way may require some magic to make the printer follow your paths correctly.