No laser but this is what I can do..

[lucas kreft]

I did these examples about 4 years ago.
This is my story:

I had a business partner who had a laser and was looking for someone with graphic design experience. I finished multi media graphic design. My teacher always pushed me more than the other students, that prick.. aha just kidding, but you could say he knows potential.

So he had the laser, and I would design. Him 70-me 30%.
He didn't know how do anything, and neither did I.. The stupid thing was in Chinese:confused:
When the laser would burn it would go left to right then backtrack. I figured how to make it do a left-right, right-left pass so increased speed by 50% in a week. The bed was also great 96x48.
The laser was a piece of garbage. It was slightly skewed by 3 degrees, and the 70% man tried to realign the guide rods it was square, but it created problems.
Did more tweaking and this is what I did.:D The shower is an example to clients of what I can do.

5 years later, meeting a business man, I might be going to Dubai to do this.. I just hope things work out because its all I think about.. wanting to be the best in the world.
I just want an opportunity..

[Todd MacKinnon]

Very nice work!!!!

[Stephen Kane]

Lucas

Excellent work

[paul mott]

Good fortune Lucas, you deserve success.

Paul.

[lucas kreft]

thanks everyone

[Frank Corker]

Nice work, love the shower.

[Chris Achtschin]

Good luck!

[lucas kreft]

thanks for all the comments! i very do appreciate it.
I use adobe illustrator to vectorize the raster(jpeg) image it takes countless hours to do this.
when you blow up a raster image no mater what it pixelates or blurs. this is an example i found on the net.
187486
so its many hundreds of layers that you overlap then enlarge the image. you can enlarge the image to 100ft if you wanted to, its what i learned in school but incorporating it into laser/granite. i have to do this for large images. then convert it to bw or 4 passes to do color cmyk, but i have never done it.
i heard there is software that you can blow up a jpeg without it pixelating now..
but i enjoy the stress of vectorizing.
most of my examples are on my facebook gallery. check it out!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=16711&id=501437595&l=7b4def00fb
doing the athlete sports bar tiles was pretty cool. I had a list of athletes given, then thought hey why don't I put their signatures on it. Well I had to find then vectorize every signature. that wasn't very fun, and it was extremely hard to find them all, and decent images of them that was high quality. I was cocky thinking it would take a few days. It took about 2 weeks.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=19250&id=501437595&l=e4eb47617f raw images




eastwood was my first piece i ever made, i understood the contrast levels and that was it. my business partner was blown away, but the laser is a piece of crap.. what i would do for a kern laser heh!
cheers everyone

[Dan Hintz]

i heard there is software that you can blow up a jpeg without it pixelating now..
Yep, and it's surprisingly inexpensive, too, but it's not a miracle worker. You can only blow up an image with finite resolution so much before you have no choice but to introduce visible error. With a quality image as a starting point, figure on 8-10 times increase in resolution as your max before errors really start to become visible.

In the end, though, a vector image is your best bet for "unlimited" size increases. That said, there's a practical limit there, too... every area that is missing detail will continue to miss that detail, and it can become noticeable as size increases. Let's say you vectorized that car and forgot to put a good separation line between the radiator and the front lip. Looks awesome on the screen, but put it on a 4'x4' poster and suddenly it looks very unfinished. I'm sure you already know that having played with so many, but it's something many aren't aware of. Customers aren't too happy when they see errors like that because "It's a vector file, it should be perfect at any resolution".

I wish I had the patience to do the vector conversion like you do. I suppose if I practiced more I would get faster and then wouldn't mind it as much. Luckily, most projects provide me with "high enough" resolution for the size engravings I do, so I can skip that part. If one of the local colleges offered a summer art program that offered help in that area, though, I'd be all over it like white on rice.

[Greg Bednar]

The shower is extremely impressive. Very well done.