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Mike Null
08-13-2010, 11:04 PM
Here's a project I undertook this week. It's a 10" x 13" piece of polished brushed stainless steel, 12 gauge. I mounted it on a 12" x 15" black piano finish plaque.

The layout is the customer's, a St Louis office of a global architectural/design firm.

Step by step:

1. cleaned laser optics
2. tested some scrap stainless to see if settings were still ok
3. cleaned stainless with dna
4. air brushed thin coat of Cermark on ss plate and let dry
5. lasered; job took 44 minutes mostly due to the border around the text
6. washed the plate under running water and dried
7. mounted the plate with 8 strips of gold line tape
8. polished and packaged

I priced this at $285.00.

Viktor Voroncov
08-14-2010, 3:14 AM
Great, what kind of plaque you have used for this project? Piano from JDS?

Mike Null
08-14-2010, 6:07 AM
Yes Viktor, it's a JDS plaque.

Frank Corker
08-14-2010, 6:46 AM
Terrific job Mike, plaque looks brilliant.

Larry Bratton
08-14-2010, 9:21 AM
Beauty Mike...Great Job!

Dee Gallo
08-14-2010, 10:29 AM
Thanks for the clear and precise tutorial, Mike! Could you post the settings too, please?

cheers, dee

Mike Null
08-14-2010, 10:47 AM
Dee

Thank you. I'm using a Trotec 45 watt Speedy 300.

My settings are 100 P, 27 inches per sec, (that's 19% speed on this machine) and 600 dpi.

Tim Bateson
08-14-2010, 12:00 PM
Very nice work. Was did you use for your price bases? Time, Time & Materials, other?

George M. Perzel
08-14-2010, 12:51 PM
Hi Mike;
Nice job-looks great.
You may be able to save some time if you make the border out of layers of vector lines- use the contour tool. Saves a ton of time, especially if the interior image/text is small.
Best regards;
George
LaserArts

Mike Null
08-14-2010, 1:31 PM
George,
I'll give that a try. Thanks.

Tim

My pricing turned out to be a little high based on an original quote on the stainless. After some shopping I was able to reduce my cost on the stainless from nearly $100 to slightly over $30. Based on the original quote I would not have been happy with the margin but was going to run the job anyway.

Martin Boekers
08-14-2010, 3:38 PM
George brought up an idea that I thought about, with vectoring the outline.

I vector outline all the plates I make that don't have borders now
as it makes trimming so much easier and fast as lightning compared
to rastering a border.

I haven't tried it, but do you think it would give a nice edge by
knocking it out of focus a bit for the vector?

This would save time on bordered plates.

Marty

Dan Hintz
08-14-2010, 4:20 PM
I thought about suggesting vectoring the borders, but in this case the text goes almost to the edge, so time savings would have been minimal... or it may have even had a negative impact on time in this case.

Dave Russell Smith
08-14-2010, 5:16 PM
Nice job Mike.

Greg Bednar
08-14-2010, 5:33 PM
That's a sweet job Mike.

Scott Challoner
08-14-2010, 6:00 PM
I thought about suggesting vectoring the borders, but in this case the text goes almost to the edge, so time savings would have been minimal... or it may have even had a negative impact on time in this case.
I respectfully disagree Dan. There's a lot of space from the bottom of the border and the last sentence. If Mike engraved from bottom to top, it probably took 7 or 8 minutes just to get to the bottom line of text. There's also a lot of space between sentences. At the slow speed it takes to mark with Cermark, it takes a looong time to get all the way across a plaque just to make a tiny mark in the vertical bars of the border. I think vector is the way to go for borders.

Hannu Rinne
08-14-2010, 6:54 PM
Hi Mike,

Beautiful work, look's really precious - awesome !

Regards
- Hannu

Mike Null
08-14-2010, 8:31 PM
Thanks for the kind words.

The border was time consuming but the customer insisted and I was under the gun on this job so I didn't want to experiment with techniques I hadn't tried before. I'll fool around with the vectoring and see how it works.

Dan Hintz
08-14-2010, 8:53 PM
At the slow speed it takes to mark with Cermark, it takes a looong time to get all the way across a plaque just to make a tiny mark in the vertical bars of the border.
True... forgot about the slooooow speed...

Rodne Gold
08-15-2010, 12:14 AM
Be careful of vectoring borders with stuff like cerdec which needs fairly precise settings to work , often ramping varys power near corners and the results aren't as expected.

George D Gabert
08-16-2010, 9:10 AM
I think it was Roy Brewer who suggested to break the border in 2 parts, at a diagonal. This reduces the travel to just the border and skips all the white spaces.

GDG

Mike Null
08-16-2010, 9:22 AM
George

I don't recall how that would work and I'm not too concerned over saving a few minutes on this job. What I just thought of was a feature on my machine that might let me raster the border faster if I break it into horizontal and vertical lines.

My machine will raster in the Y axis though I have never used it. My guess is that would save 10 to 15 minutes on this job. Again, I am interested in quality production more than saving time but I will try this method on a sample piece and, if it works, will post the result.

Mark Ross
08-16-2010, 9:55 AM
We do quite a bit of stuff with borders and because Corel doesn't have an optimize scheme, what we would do on a job like that is split it into 5 jobs. Top border, bottom border, left border, right border, text.

We have found we reduce our laser time by about 20-25% by doing that. It has mostly to do with the back and forth travel. I don't know if that scheme would work for Cermark though.

George D Gabert
08-16-2010, 12:59 PM
Mark,

Powerclip to the rescue!(?).




An alternative I find significantly faster than color mapping; incredibly simple. For minimum laser time, send three files to your laser(in no particular order):

The internal logo/graphics
The upper left 1/2 of the border
The lower right 1/2 of the border
My solution is to create a rectangle slightly larger than the border(precision not important). Convert to curve then delete the lower right node and powerclip the border to the resulting triangle and print it(selected only).


Undo the Powerclip and undo the delete node then delete the u/l node and PowerClip the border to the new triangle and print it.





Notes:

Be sure your clipping "rectangle" has no outline (or send raster only if applicable).
Many think powerclipping is only for bitmaps, but try it on vector objects, groups, etc.
I know you're thinking you'll see a seam, but try the concept on a small scrap and I think you'll be surprised how precisely DRAW generates/outputs the powerclip(s).


Picture frames with stuff all around the frames are quite popular now. A great application for this procedure.

This is per Roys post

Don Necaise
08-17-2010, 5:30 PM
Mike
What did you polish the stainless with and how if you dont mind me asking.

Mike Null
08-17-2010, 9:45 PM
Don

The supplier applied a brush finish and polished it. Before I packaged it I polished it with stainless polish mostly to remove fingerprints.

Richard Rumancik
08-17-2010, 9:53 PM
We do quite a bit of stuff with borders and because Corel doesn't have an optimize scheme, what we would do on a job like that is split it into 5 jobs. Top border, bottom border, left border, right border, text.

We have found we reduce our laser time by about 20-25% by doing that. It has mostly to do with the back and forth travel. I don't know if that scheme would work for Cermark though.

Mark, your method is very similar to Roy's method, except Roy combines the top and left in one file and the right and bottom in one file. His method makes it a bit easier to manage as there are only 3 "files" to be sent. But the end result would be very similar. No reason why it would not work with Cermark, as you are still rastering.

Rodne's caution was only if someone tried to vector-mark the Cermark - it might not be predictable on the corners. It depends on how well a laser handles ramping on the corners, as the mark might not be consistent if energy density is not constant. I have vectored borders, but never with Cermark, so I can't comment as to whether it will work.

Nice job, Mike. For one-offs, sometimes it is prudent to take the hit on laser time like you did rather than to take a risk of having to do the job twice. When/if you have production lots, it may make sense to experiment.

Mike Null
08-17-2010, 10:03 PM
Richard

thank you. We have the same idea about dealing with the risk. Roy's method would speed the process but I had only one piece of stainless and a deadline to meet so experimenting wasn't in the cards.

Bill Jermyn
08-18-2010, 5:33 AM
I have broken a file apart into vertical and horizontal components (breaking curves apart, grouping and moving to separate layers). I then engraved the horizontal elements and text, rotated the work and the vertical file 90 degrees, and then engraved the vertical elements. I had a job that took 1:59 to engrave normally. Doing the job in 2 parts reduced the time to 19 minutes (I was amazed that the time reduction would be 84%!). The piece was around 16 inches square with text and multiple vertical lines running down the piece. I did have to re-home the lens very slightly for the second pass (using a piece of scrap), but since I was engraving multiple pieces, it was certainly worth the trouble.

I have no idea if the necessity of re-homing is because my machine is somehow in need of alignment, or the rulers are mis-aligned, or what, so your mileage may differ on that aspect.

I've been thinking of putting a video up on youtube, but I haven't gotten around to it...

Keith Outten
08-18-2010, 7:36 AM
Excellent job Mike, the plaque looks perfect and your customer got a bargain.
.

Mike Null
08-18-2010, 8:21 AM
Thank you. They were very happy, even with the fairly high price.

Don Necaise
08-18-2010, 9:49 PM
Mike
Can I ask what you polished the plate with after you lasered and washed it

Mike Null
08-18-2010, 10:07 PM
Don

Just standard spray on stainless steel polish like you'd use on kitchen appliances.

John Noell
08-18-2010, 11:31 PM
..I don't recall how that would work...I thought Roy's tip was so slick that I keep it on my desktop: For minimum laser time, send three files to your laser(in no particular order):


The internal logo/graphics
The upper left 1/2 of the border
The lower right 1/2 of the border

My solution is to create a rectangle slightly larger than the border(precision not important). Convert to curve then delete the lower right node and powerclip the border to the resulting triangle and print it(selected only).

Undo the Powerclip and undo the delete node then delete the u/l node and PowerClip the border to the new triangle and print it.

Mike Null
08-19-2010, 6:12 AM
John

That sounds like a great method. I'll give it a try.

Dee Gallo
08-19-2010, 12:25 PM
John, I thought Roy's solution was pretty slick too - that's one of the issues that has always bothered me timewise. My solution does not use powerclip, I go with a low tech way: I make a white fill/no line triangle to cover the half I want to eliminate and print, then move it to cover the other half and print again. When you raster it only prints what is visible.

Also, for efficiency's sake, I would raster the text at the same time as one half of the border, since the head is going to be going over there anyway.

I use this technique all the time when I have several small tile designs on one document but the tiles are of different thicknesses, so I have to change the focus. But I can prepare the designs and use one file and one template for everything.

:) dee