Setting up artwork for laser cutting/engraving

[Stephen Sullivan]

Hello Everyone, This is about my first or second post. My laser will be in any day now and would like to get started on some artwork prep.

This may sound very basic but I haven't gotten it straight in my head.

When setting up you art, how do you define what cuts, engraves, etc? Thanks for any help.

Guess i should say I am using Corel Draw X6

[Mark Sipes]

Most lasers use the Black line and fill as raster engraving and red hairline lines as vector cutting.

[Stephen Sullivan]

Most lasers use the Black line and fill as raster engraving and red hairline lines as vector cutting.

Mark, Thank you.

I have heard talk of stacking images to get things to raster darker, or deeper is that true? or when I get the plug ins for X6 with my machine, will there be options to set different speeds and power. (in general that is)

[Rich Harman]

The Chinese lasers are a bit different. Fill and line width are completely ignored. If your lines form an enclosed space (closed shape that could be filled) then that outline can be either vector cut or you can choose to raster it. You cannot raster a line that does not form an enclosed shape.

If for example, you wanted to raster a single line you would either have to first convert it to a bitmap, or you would need to turn the single line into a polygon in Corel Draw. It is easy to do but I don't remember right now what that procedure is called.

So when you draw things in Corel Draw just remember that the laser will not recognize line widths, use hairlines.

[Rodne Gold]

That's the "proper" way of designing , ie not to rely on line width but to have an enclosed filled boundary to represent it. The design is then portable across many platforms and will work on any device (lines with width wont work on a rotary engraver or vinyl cutter and often don't come in right when importing or exporting to other packages)
It's more of a schlep than WYSIWYG but its the right way.....

[tommy suriady]

Hello,
I use corelcut that comes with the machine to define if you are going to cut it or engrave it.
you actually set the outline color of your artwork and then in the corelcut panel, set how much power to cut or engrave for individual color outline. what ever color outline you use will be displayed.

So if you determine that a black line cuts at 50% power+speed and a yellow line engraves at 10%power and 100% speed, an artwork with a black outlined circle on top of another yellow outlined circle will result in the laser engraving and then cutting it based on your setting. You can set any power and speed combination, cutting or carving, for any color in corel in the property table.
if you delete the yellow line, then it only cuts. if you delete the black line, then it only engraves.

Doesn't care about fill color.

Hopefully understand what i am saying.
Seems alot easier doing it than explaining it. Haha.

[Ross Moshinsky]

WYSIWYG is a much more tolerant way of managing graphics for the laser. There are several ways to work around this.

1. Design in Corel. Export as JPEG/BMP and use that to raster engrave.
2. Design in Corel. Export as JPEG/BMP. Open in Corel or Inkscape. Trace image. You might even get a good trace in whatever software the laser uses.
3. Design in Corel so everything is closed paths and uses no stroke.

Most likely you'll use a combination of all three.

[Ernie Martinez]

Epilog Lasers ignore line color, a hairline width line will vector cut, anything larger will raster.

[Glen Monaghan]

Epilog Lasers ignore line color

Unless you turn on the option to specify speed/power/frequency/air assist/raster or vector by color...

-Glen

[Martin Boekers]

It sounds like you may be a bit new to Corel. Spend these next few days learning the ins and outs. It's much harder mastering Corel than running the laser portion.
There should be tutorial that came with Corel, also there are tutorial dissc for sale such as "Corel Unleashed" & "Lyndas". YouTube is a great learning ground. You may
want to set up bookmarks for vendors/products, artwork, tips and tricks etc. It makes it easier to find in the future.

[Bill Cunningham]

Epilog Lasers ignore line color, a hairline width line will vector cut, anything larger will raster.

My Epilog rasters anything over .007 and cuts anything below. I can set the power/speed by colour for vector cutting, but not raster like some of the newer machines. I usually tell my customers that want cutting and engraving in the same file/layout to make anything to be cut a hairline and any line to be rastered at least .010 that way there is no confusion.

[Stephen Sullivan]

It sounds like you may be a bit new to Corel. Spend these next few days learning the ins and outs. It's much harder mastering Corel than running the laser portion.
There should be tutorial that came with Corel, also there are tutorial dissc for sale such as "Corel Unleashed" & "Lyndas". YouTube is a great learning ground. You may
want to set up bookmarks for vendors/products, artwork, tips and tricks etc. It makes it easier to find in the future.

Martin, Your right, Corel is a new bird for me. Especially since I have been using Photoshop... Got to think different. I believe the laser comes with Laser Cut, and has the Corel X6 plug ins and print driver.

I have been through the Lyndas basic course on X6, which was to basic for me. So I am watching some things on scroll saw workshop that he does on drawing in corel and what ever else I can find.

[Kevin Groenke]

Not sure about the Chinese lasers, but with our Universals, we can run the lasers from pretty much any application. We use Autocad, Rhino and Illustrator primarily, we do not have Corel and it is not used in any of our disciplines.

Stephen, if you use Photoshop, perhaps you also use Illustrator? If so, you might be able to save yourself the trouble of learning another application.

-kg

[Rodne Gold]

You can run just about any design program with the chinese software , so long as you can export the graphic in the format the software can accept. Even tho some say they run directly off Corel , they still actually port to their own front end...

[Stephen Sullivan]

Kevin & Rodne,
I don't use Illustrator figured I would switch to Corel, because it seem the most popular package everyone uses and i like a lot of the features it has. The subscription is less expensive than Adobe's is also, so it will work out in the end. Just got this learning curve...

I was thinking they might have just some type of port for the file formats, but since I don't have yet, will have to wait and see. Hurricane delayed it two weeks, arrives in NY on 11/29, hope fully customs won't hold it up, and I will have it before Christmas.