Basic laser cutting and engraving lessons
GENERAL GUIDE TO CREATING A FILE FOR LASER CUTTING
INITIAL SETTING
To create your Design you can use any vector software that saves files in SVG | format PDF | AI | EPS | DXF | DWG.
ILLUSTRATOR
INKSCAPE
AUTOCAD
DRAFT SIGHT
JANVAS
We recommend setting the software to millimeters (mm). Go to Preferences, where you should find an option for Units.
For each element, you can define both the fill color and the stroke color. To create an effective design for laser cutting and engraving, it is advisable to use only outlines/strokes/lines for cutting and scoring, and fills for engravings.
COLOR DIFFERENTIATION
Differentiate the colors of the lines of your design to associate them with the different processes. You can also use many colors and it will be possible to associate them individually with the required processing. We advise you to abound
PROCESSINGS – CUTTING/SCRATCHING/ENGRAVING
What will be cut must be drawn as the ideal path of a blade of laser light on a two-dimensional plane.
CUT
Cut the material second
the designed path
SCRATCH
Makes a shallow mark following the drawn path
ENGRAVE
It engraves the areas “in focus”.
draw
- Do not draw objects and/or details that are too small with dimensions smaller than the thickness of the chosen material, and generally no smaller than 2-5 millimeters.
- To get an idea of the cutting consumption, use a pen thickness of a few tenths of a millimeter (between 0.2 and 0.4 mm) depending on the thickness of the chosen material.
Do you have a project to laser cut?
ONLINE LASER CUTTING AND ENGRAVING SERVICE FROM FILE
You will immediately be able to see Preview, Dimensions, Materials, Costs and Delivery Times.
SAVE
THE USABLE FILE FORMATS ARE .AI | .DXF | .DWG | .SVG | .PDF | .EPS.
3D files cannot be used. Whichever vector program you are using, you can save the file by following the path File > Save, Save As, or Export.
DO NOT use RASTER IMAGES
CNC laser cutting is only possible using vector images, non-vector contents will be automatically ignored.
Some vector software such as Illustrator and Inkscape offer the possibility of transforming any image into vectors through the Dynamic Recalculation or Trace function.
EXPAND TEXT
The laser machine software does not recognize text in font form. If there is text in your file, remember to explode/expand it before saving the file. Exploding means transforming the text font into a drawing by tracing its outline; almost all software allows you to do this automatically.
FOR ENGRAVING WORK ONLY.
To use traces/lines as engraving it is necessary to expand as must be done for the text.
JOIN OVERLAPPING AREAS AND LINES
Avoid overlapping areas and lines. Sometimes, especially in files created for graphic printing, there are elements made up of multiple overlapping parts. In this case, to carry out any processing it is necessary to join the parts in a single piece. The principle that each line must correspond to a movement of the laser machine always applies.
