Raster engraving a circle

[Neville Stewart]

Im trying to raster engrave a circle but I only want to engrave the line, not fill in the circle. I'm using Corel x5 and Lasercut 5.3
I rastered 2 intersecting squares and it cut into the inside of the squares, but where they intersected it left it alone, so you could tell what they were, but is it possible to raster the line and leave the open area clear? TIA Neville

[Larry Bratton]

I am not familiar with Lasercut 5.3, but I do that all the time. If you have a circle that is filled, delete the fill. Then change the outline to 1 point. You can leave it as a hairline, but be sure the driver is set to raster and not vector.

[Neville Stewart]

Im actually using Aspire to create DXF - I need to get familiar with X5, Lasercut is pretty awful. I presume you are talking about working in X5 correct?

[Ross Moshinsky]

Draw a circle and change the stroke. Draw two circles, use the path tool to remove the difference. Draw two circles and make the inside circle white. Frankly, there are about 20 different ways to do this.

[Neville Stewart]

OK I guess its time to break out the X5 manual then, thanks for the pointers.

[Mike Null]

Neville
Your issue may be with the driver rather than the software. See whether you can turn off vector or raster, whether you can engrave by color etc. What Larry said about X5 should work if your driver will accept it.

[Neville Stewart]

Thanks Mike, I looked at the Rabbit site ( although I dont have a Rabbit ) and he shows how to successfully install the driver in X5, but I cant get it to work, so I may try to load it in X4 or 3 instead, and try that. The issue I have now is that I export a layered dxf, but Lasercut only sees it as a closed vector and if engrave is chosen, it rasters the whole thing, but if cut is chosen it does a profile on the vector. It seems I'll have more control if I work from within Corel rather than the way I'm doing it now.

[Larry Bratton]

What kind of Laser do you have Neville? I am working in X3 but Corel is basically the same as X4 and X5. Lasers are the same principle as a printer, printers have specific drivers. I assume that the Lasercut would show up as a new printer upon installation. If it will drive your machine then it should work when printed to via Corel.

[Larry Robinson]

Neville,

Like you I also use Aspire for much of my drawings. I believe to engrave in Laser cut you have to have an enclosed area. What I think you will have to do is draw two circles. They only have to be a few thousands of an inch apart. Then select engrave in the Lasercut software and it will engrave between the lines.

Larry
.

[Neville Stewart]

Larry & Larry, its the same as Larry Robinsons but 100 w tube. I'm designing on one comp & running laser on a small laptop. I think I will look closer at installing the X5 driver but for now Larry R's solution will work for what I need.

[Larry Robinson]

Neville,

I also design on one computer and run my laser off a laptop. However, both the laser laptop and my cnc laptop are hooked up to wireless network. Simply download from my design computer and away I go. I tried the driver for Corel, but did not like it.

Larry