Using the above method provides an outline of the bitmap. Turn off smoothing and stack scans unless you want to be stacking engraving on top of engraving. For lower contrast images fiddle with the threshold, updating to see how it changes. This will work if it is a high contrast image. You can try to scan it with the default settings. Then select the bitmap and trace it using. Select the bitmap you want to import in the file dialog. Useful things for laser cutting Scanning a bitmap Instructions for install are also on the Nottingham Hackspace wiki (linked to above). The files use the Gimp palette file structure where colors are defined in terms of a triplet of numbers in a RGB format. More palettes can be added by installing palette files in the directory share/palettes. Inkscape has a variety of built-in palettes (some copied from Gimp). Inkscape's manual has this to say about custom palettes: Nottingham Hackspace have made a custom Palette for Inkscape, both with the seven colours that appear to survive the DXF export process and all the colours from the LaserCut v5.3 software: Stroke is what colour the line is (and a various other things that aren't useful for laser cutting).Ĭustom Palette for making cut lines appear as layers in LaserCut v5.3 This allows you to change the appearance of the object. If you want to visually distinguish different objects. This means you need to convert these objects into things the DXF format understands. Experimentation is good!ĭXF files do not have some of the primitives in svg like text or the curvy edged boxes that Inkscape generates. I'm not going to spend too much time on this as there are plenty of tutorials on the web for this sort of thing. The next two are fairly self explanatory (segment to line, segment to curve). The control points are 180 degrees away from each other and they are the same distance away.ġ0th button: The circle (auto-smooth) The control points are set in such a way as to make it smooth. The control points are 180 degrees away from each other.ĩth button: The second square (symmetric). So ou can have crazy angles.Ĩth button: The first square (smooth). You can change the type by pressing the 7-10th buttons.ħth button: diamonds are corners: The control points for the curves are unconnected. There are a few different types of end points. To add a point select two (or more) connected end points and press the first button (+ with a square and line through it), deletion just requires the selection of an end point. The first two are add and remove points (which are very useful for adding detail or clearing up a scan). There are lots of useful tools in the tool bar. The control points tug at the curve, the further away they are from the straight line the more the curvy the curve becomes. There are two end points (which can be diamonds,squares or large circles) and 1-2 control points (small circles with lines connecting them to the end points). If you want to do further editing of a path type object then select it andĬurves are specified by 3,4 points. If you click the object again you can rotate or skew the object with the arrows on the side of the object. This selects object, and allows you to then move them by clicking and dragging or scaling them with arrows around the edge. It has been fairly accurate, I did my laptop stand this way. This sets the measurement of objects to millimetres. I do use qcad to check the files that are output by this method though. It can intersect and do path operations on curves and can trace bitmaps, which I haven't been able to do on qcad. Joining the lines helps somewhat the crazy cut order it makes. This is also why the software complains if the sections that you are engraving aren't continous, it might find a section that is open and engrave for ever.Ĭut is straightforward. It also means that if you overlap two objects on the same engrave layer then it will not engrave twice but stop engraving. This allows for unengraved things inside engraved sections. The first line it comes to it switches the laser on, when it comes to another line it switches off. In the laser cutter software it does it by taking a vertical line and and then seeing where it intersects with your shapes lines. It is non trivial to decide if a point is inside or outside a shape and should be engraved or not. Some engraving may not work at all unless this is used.Įngrave involves filling in the shapes. Note that for complicated paths, it may also be necessary to use the "Unite curves" feature of the laser cutter software. Object -> Fill and Stroke -> Set fill to None.4.6 Custom Palette for making cut lines appear as layers in LaserCut v5.3.
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