How to engrave image on a mosaic of tiles

[Ernie Martinez]

I've got a request to engrave a logo on some large floor tiles. The customer would like this to span multiple tiles. I've seen a photo of this done before. Can someone point me in the right direction to get instructions on how to do this. I'm sure I'd figure out eventually, but I value the experience on this board to save me a lot of time.

Simply put one image over multiple pages I guess.

Thanks in Advance

Ernie

[john banks]

Foxit PDF reader (you could export your image as a PDF first) will let you print a PDF (and therefore an image) across multiple sheets. Free, worth a download to see whether it will do what you need, might be able to fiddle with page sizes.

Alternatively, you could hack up the image by hand.

[Ernie Martinez]

I was hoping to find a way to do it in Corel.

[Ernie Martinez]

Also can someone recommend a light colored stone that will engrave with dark lines.

Ernie

[Ernie Martinez]

Ok, I figured out that I need to print to tiled pages. So my tile sizes are 10" x 10" and I want a mosaic of 4 tiles by 4 tiles or 40" x 40". So is my original page size in corel 40" x 40" ? If so, will the print Driver output this as 16 jobs? e.g. Myjob1 thru Myjob16. So I enter tile 1 hit go, then next tile hit go etc?????

[Lee DeRaud]

I was hoping to find a way to do it in Corel.There's a kabuki dance with power-clip and the grid tool that works nicely, I just don't do it often enough to remember the details offhand. A search on 'powerclip' or 'power-clip' should cough it up, as this topic comes up every couple of months. (Certainly often enough to qualify for a tutorial/sticky...)

EDIT: here's one http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?108842-Splitting-large-designs&highlight=powerclip
Heh, and the last post in the thread suggests making it a sticky...

[Ernie Martinez]

I dont think that would work for me, since (Correct me if I'm wrong) that method assumes that all the tiles will fit on the bed and is engraved in one pass.

[Mark Sipes]

Ernie can you put in your signature block the software you are running... 7, vista, xp,, corel 11, 12, 13, 14 15, 16 ???

[Martin Boekers]

Here's a way I do it in Corel

1 Layout out your tiles side by side in position

2 Group your tiles together

3 Size your graphic and postion with in the grouped tiles

4 Select your image with the "pick" tool

5 Under the Effects "drop down" select "Power Clip"

6 On the Power Clip flyout choose "Place inside Container"

7 Use "Pick" tool and select the group of tiles

8 Go to the Arrange drop down and select ungroup

Voila! now you should be able to move the tiles apart with the graphic enclosed.
You can change, edit , extract by right clicking on the tile.

There are tons of these tutorials on You Tube, set up a book marks folder and save the ones you like for future reference!

By selecting each tile individually you can send them one at a time. Make sure you figure out how long it will take as these
tiles may take quite a bit of time.


Marty

[Ernie Martinez]

Cool, Now can I select each tile individually to print?

[Martin Boekers]

Cool, Now can I select each tile individually to print?

Yup! and you still have some editing capabilities by right clicking on it. If you decide to do some
to hang on the wall, JDS sells some nice frames for 4.25 & 6 inch tiles. Just remember to adjust
the image to take into consideration the portion that the frame covers.

[dave cox]

Hi Ernie, this isn't conventional way but it works.
1/With guidelines set up size and placement of tile and put square
2/ With quidelines over the laser bed another square
3/ Combine the two squares and fill with white so everything other than the area of tile to be engraved is covered
4/ Align the image/graphics with top left same as tile square top left
5/In tools>options>rules>nudge set this at 100mm or whatever the tile size is then for each new tile just move one left and one up and the next part of the image will be there.

[Dan Hintz]

Don't forget to account for grout lines... if the lines are thick, the image will look oddly distorted, so you need to remove that much of the image before engraving. If the tiles will be practically right next to each other, directly etching onto each tile is fine.