interesting discovery

[Dee Gallo]

I got a ton of balsa slats and started doing some tests to see how it burns -

I did a few designs which came out extremely well and then wanted to try something else. In CorelDraw, there is a custom spray paint brush. I used it to make these fish and butterflies, ungrouped and moved the stuff around a bit. Then I printed raster-only without changing the color or lines or anything.

The results surprised me. There is a 3-D-ish quality made by the colors. The triangles and circles on the bottom are solid black - you can see the difference between them and the circles by the fish, which were shaded.

The top 2 slats are my first tries - they are all line art and solid black fill. The bottom 2 are the colored art from the spray brush. The pictures are more blurry than the real thing. I think they will look even better with some finish on them to make the wood grain act act as background. Waddiya tink?

cheers, dee

[James Jaragosky]

I got a ton of balsa slats and started doing some tests to see how it burns -

I did a few designs which came out extremely well and then wanted to try something else. In CorelDraw, there is a custom spray paint brush. I used it to make these fish and butterflies, ungrouped and moved the stuff around a bit. Then I printed raster-only without changing the color or lines or anything.

The results surprised me. There is a 3-D-ish quality made by the colors. The triangles and circles on the bottom are solid black - you can see the difference between them and the circles by the fish, which were shaded.

I think they will look even better with some finish on them to make the wood grain act act as background. Waddiya tink?

cheers, dee
That looks very nice Dee. Yes, I think a finish will help pop out the features.
This gives me more to think about, as if I dident have enought to work on as it is. I have enought Ideas for 2 life times, and the fine people here are making it worse by the day.;)
thanks for sharing
Jim J.

[Darren Null]

The fish look good, as far as I can tell. The butterflies look a bit...wrong. Maybe invert them?

[Dan Hintz]

Dee, I swear I'm going to take your laser away from you... every time I turn around you're trying something new that leads me down the experimentation path. And every time I go bee-bopping along that path I waste DAYS!


All you need to do is determine what colors link to what average power levels with your laser. If dark greens are halftoned to a 80% black screen, it's the same as an 80% power at black. Once you have that, you should be able to easily change stock clipart to the color you want and burn without any other edits.

[Belinda Barfield]

Dee,

You must stop this! You make me feel so inadequate. :D

Nice effect. I particularly like the fish. There you go, raising the bar - as always. Thanks for all your effort, and your gracious sharing of your ideas and your work.

[Martin Boekers]

Dan,

now you got me thinking:eek:

Maybe making a color grid to burn to see how the colors
burn at the same settings.

I've worked with colors before as sometimes it's easier to change a color to get a different burn rate than contrast, but I think a color grid would be much more consitent to help specify the color for the rate I want.:)


Marty

[John W. Love]

awesome job! I think the fish look fantastic!

[David Fairfield]

Beautiful goldfish! Did you have an end product in mind for these, or just experimenting?

Dave

[Dan Hintz]

Maybe making a color grid to burn to see how the colors burn at the same settings.
There may be no need to burn them. If your laser's halftone works the same as the graphics program you normally use (e.g., PhotoShop), make a grid of all the major colors (8 of them) and convert to grayscale. A color picker will tell you what the gray level is in each square, and a halftone should mimic that percentage-wise.

[Dee Gallo]

Beautiful goldfish! Did you have an end product in mind for these, or just experimenting?

Dave


Thanks, everyone for putting up with my incessant experiments - but they can be helpful right? This was just the result of me being lazy after I did the birds-over-the-water test, and wanting something fast to try, so I looked around on the toolbox....

Anyway, I do have an end product in mind, Dave - they are called pushers.... no, not drug pushers, these are mah jong tile pushers.... back to my small niche market.

I found these slats in a catalog from American Science and Surplus - a dollar per piece which I can cut into 4 pushers, which will probably sell for $20/4 with just my logo or bottom edge border on them. Extremely flat and smooth, with rounded long edges.

cheers, dee

[Guy Mathews]

I got a ton of balsa slats and started doing some tests to see how it burns -

I did a few designs which came out extremely well and then wanted to try something else. In CorelDraw, there is a custom spray paint brush. I used it to make these fish and butterflies, ungrouped and moved the stuff around a bit. Then I printed raster-only without changing the color or lines or anything.

The results surprised me. There is a 3-D-ish quality made by the colors. The triangles and circles on the bottom are solid black - you can see the difference between them and the circles by the fish, which were shaded.

The top 2 slats are my first tries - they are all line art and solid black fill. The bottom 2 are the colored art from the spray brush. The pictures are more blurry than the real thing. I think they will look even better with some finish on them to make the wood grain act act as background. Waddiya tink?

cheers, dee

I am so envious!!!!!!!!! I WANT A LASER FOR CHRISTMAS MOMMY!!!!

I have to convince my boss to fork over the cash for one of the babies! Outstanding Dee!