Laser Checkering

[John Saville]

Hi
I'm fairly new to laser engraving ( November 2013) I have a 50W Epilog laser. I purchased it for a specific job with hopes of getting into checkering and gun stock engraving at some point, but all I see in the way of instruction is from epilog and unless you are familiar with Corel Draw they kind of leave you in the dark. Can anyone direct me to where I can learn to create checkering patterns and how to shape them into usable designs ?

[Mike Null]

John

Welcome to SMC.

I'd advise exploring the post script fill tool on the fill tool flyout. The are quite a few options and they can be adjusted. I have not seen any tutorials for this tool but you can pick it up fairly quickly with a little practice. The one below is a very simple one where the art took about 15 minutes at most.


284211

[John Saville]

Thanks Mike ...I didn't even know that existed. Looks very usable . I wonder if you can create your own fill pattern within that feature. I see you used a diamond, but there does not appear to be one in the selection choices...Guess I have to learn Corel !

[Mike Null]

John

That is the crosshatch fill where I set the spacing to be equal. See below.


284218

[Gary Gardner]

Thanks Mike. I don't know if that helped John but it sure helped me. I wondered how that was done.
Gary

[David Somers]

Mike,

I may be wrong, but aren't most gun makers interested in the more heavily textured, 3D sort of checkering rather than flat line based checkering? In other words, rather than a flat diamond pattern the interior of each diamond would come to a point. There is one example if this on a rifle stock in the Epilogue Laser samples page.

Any thoughts on that process? Is that time effective on a laser as opposed to a CNC device or doing it by hand?

Dave
PS. 60 degrees and in between rain storms today. A pretty day. Crocuses and Daffodils are up here. Hope you guys are seeing much better weather as well!!!

[Bert Kemp]

Mike,

I may be wrong, but aren't most gun makers interested in the more heavily textured, 3D sort of checkering rather than flat line based checkering? In other words, rather than a flat diamond pattern the interior of each diamond would come to a point. There is one example if this on a rifle stock in the Epilogue Laser samples page.

Any thoughts on that process? Is that time effective on a laser as opposed to a CNC device or doing it by hand?

Dave
PS. 60 degrees and in between rain storms today. A pretty day. Crocuses and Daffodils are up here. Hope you guys are seeing much better weather as well!!!
@Dave Somers
I think what Mike has done is mostly for decoration rather then checkering for better grip. But you can take any of the patterns such as the one Mike did and run it thru in 3d mode to get the depth for better grip. I believe its the gun owners rather then the makers that would get the checkering done. Sometimes they come pre checkered but most stocks come plain so the owner can have it customized his way.

[Mike Null]

Bert is correct. Preparing and engraving 3d art is a very costly process--maybe more than the gun. This was a $400 Marlin.

This is a business for me and I don't have time to mess with 3d as much as I like it.

[Chuck Stone]

here's a couple of patterns you can try out..

[David Somers]

Thanks everyone!

I asked that cause I have a friend/co-worker in another National Park site who is a gun smith as well, and learning to do his own checkering. If I ever end up with an engraver I would help him out if possible. Plus I was kind of asking for John who started the thread, or at least kibitzing and asking in advance of his asking.

I am curious though....assume you have a commonly sized rifle stock and someone wanted to have a 3d checker on it? And you have about an 80 watt machine. What would be a reasonable time to run the job over? I have always meant to ask him how long it takes him to do this with the method he uses now.

Dave

[John Saville]

Thanks Mike and everyone.

Chuck, how do you fill a particular area with one of those patterns? I saw that it provides a reasonable checker type finish as they are, but I am not good at Corel and haven't figured out that part. The pattern that Epilog puts out as a sample isn't really a diamond, more like small 3D triangles. Unfortunately they don't explain how to change the shape of the area to be covered. I appreciate all of the help. I'm a lot closer than I ever was.

By the way, there is a market for this type of work in the Cowboy Action community. I am primarily a hand engraver.
John S.

[Dave Sheldrake]

One of my few real talents is hand checkering :) A laser would be useful for setting out the primary lines for hand checkering though,nothing more scary than running out the first director lines when working on an expensive Wetherby or Purdy.

cheers

Dave

[Mike Null]

Dave

I envy that talent though the guys who contact me are bargain hunters who put no value on skill, equipment, experience etc. So there's not a lot of reason for me to spend the time to do or try to do 3d work.

[Don Corbeil]

Chuck can probably do it a lot faster than I could, but I just started practicing on corel draw a few days ago, and I created the same checkered pattern that he has on the right, in about 15 minutes. It simply involved drawing a square, using fountain fill (F11), and then a lot of copy paste... It was quite fun actually!



Thanks Mike and everyone.

Chuck, how do you fill a particular area with one of those patterns? I saw that it provides a reasonable checker type finish as they are, but I am not good at Corel and haven't figured out that part. The pattern that Epilog puts out as a sample isn't really a diamond, more like small 3D triangles. Unfortunately they don't explain how to change the shape of the area to be covered. I appreciate all of the help. I'm a lot closer than I ever was.

By the way, there is a market for this type of work in the Cowboy Action community. I am primarily a hand engraver.
John S.

[George Beck]

Just to make you nuts, check this out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZleOfiMd-dU

[Bert Kemp]

Just to make you nuts, check this out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZleOfiMd-dU
yep it did is that the real speed of the machine? wow

[Dave Sheldrake]

It's just something I found I was good at Mike, I never use it or do any of it these days :)

cheers

Dave

[Dan Hintz]

Chuck can probably do it a lot faster than I could, but I just started practicing on corel draw a few days ago, and I created the same checkered pattern that he has on the right, in about 15 minutes. It simply involved drawing a square, using fountain fill (F11), and then a lot of copy paste... It was quite fun actually!

Actually, it's even faster as you don't need to copy/paste... a single square is adequate to do the entire job.

[Don Corbeil]

Actually, it's even faster as you don't need to copy/paste... a single square is adequate to do the entire job.

and no hints on how...?
now I'm going to have to go look it up :(

[Mike Null]

While you're looking that up also look up power clip so that you can shape the checkering.

[Don Corbeil]

looks like some homework ahead...

[Chuck Stone]

and no hints on how...?
now I'm going to have to go look it up :(

LOL .. it took me a couple of minutes for that one on the right, but I was
also on the phone at the time.

From a single square .. I'd probably go to Transformations, Position and
move it over the same width as the square and Apply to Duplicate as many
times as I needed to. I know there's better ways, I just don't know them and
that would work. Once I had a whole line of them, then I'd select the whole line
and go down. Power clip to your outline...

[Bill Cunningham]

Simplest way is just draw the shape you need, and give it a postscript fill as Mike said above..
Here's some rifle stock engravings, one was going on a prize 3030 for a cowboy action group, the other two aren't checkering but serve the same purpose. These were done on a old single shot Mod. 82 Cooey pattern .22, that I bought for $8.00 53 years ago.. Done ten years ago when I was still in the 'nothing sacred' phase of my new laser..

[David Somers]

For giggles, I passed this thread and the cool video of the laser checkering process to my friend who is a gun smith. He was suitably awed by the speed of that laser. He did let me know that a typical rifle stock checkering job would take 8 to 16 hours depending on the skill of the gun smith. How does that compare with your experience Dave Sheldrake? My friend was curious as well since he is new at that and still at the bottom end of the learning curve.

I am also curious how much difficulty you have finding the right settings on a laser to get the 3D pattern done without burning the wood in the process? Cool stuff everyone!!

Dave

[Mike Null]

Dave

In the laser engraving business there's an old woodworking term that you might be familiar with when it comes to power settings on wood items when you don't know what they should be. It's called "sneaking up on it". Just increase the power in increments until you're satisfied.

Don't be intimidated by the idea that you're going to ruin everything you touch. You'll catch on very quickly.

[Dave Sheldrake]

Hiya Dave,

8 to 16 hours seems about right depending on the check tools used (and the area required), if it's follow cutters that tends to be quicker but single points take a longggg time and a steady hand.

cheers

Dave

[David Somers]

Thanks Dave!! He was certainly wowed by the laser doing it in that video. It was cool to watch that. I think he will continue to develop the skill though. He is in IT like me and really enjoys doing hand work when he is not taking mallets to computers and servers. Doing something that is not digital in your off time helps with the sanity! Kind of like my lathe work is for me!

Hope all is well with you!

Dave

[Bill Munroe]

John, I'm not at my Corel station now, but I believe all you do is select the smart fill tool. One of the options is for patterns, and one of those options is to create one. You have to have the image you want to use already saved and select it. Another, probably easier way to do it would be to take the pattern and copy/past it, then use the power clip tool to get rid of excess. If you just enlarge the original pattern, it will make the scales or diamonds bigger. If you don't want that to happen, you'll have to copy, paste and join the patterns until you get a big enough image to use. I'm sure someone more Corel literate than I could explain it better. Hope this helps. I've been playing with Corel and the laser for almost a year now. Using this thread and a little additional research, I was able to do this in a piece of scrap cherry.285607 Also, I would like to thank every one on the forum, your postings have been a huge help!

[Scott Hearn]

I know it's an old thread but I've just become enamored with CNC woodworking of late. I have a CNC background but it's been many moons since and I've done nothing with lasers but cutout parts from stainless and titanium sheets using a 1KW co2 laser.

Could an add-on laser to a Shapeoko 3 do gunstock checkering of various patterns? I plan on doing exotic hardwoods and would prefer not to burn the wood and still be able to see the underlying grain in most cases, but it would also be nice to have the ability to contrast like Bill Munroe's example above. Am I dreaming or can one get powerful enough laser on a really small router?

[Michele Welch]

This is what I love about this community!! I've been researching how to do a vector fill with cross hatching instead of rastering to speed jobs up and still get the same filled look, so I finally took the plunge and got Corel Draw just this afternoon. I was just googling how to do it and came here and bam, here's my answer. Now onto trying it out and seeing how it works for the application I'm using it for. Anyone use it for vector fill instead of rastering? Please let me know some tips!

[Bill Reibelt]

Chuck: did you copy and paste each square to get the pattern, An easy method is to design and click the original square then CTL D and place the first square along side of the original and then Click enter Then CTL D again till the squares are the length that you require.
Then highlight the line of squares and press CTL D again and place the squares to the lower side of the original squares and click enter, Then click CTL D till the depth of squares is what you require. Cuts down on copy and paste.
Bill

[Chuck Stone]

Bill.. that's about the same as using the Transformations and position screen, Apply To Duplicate. There's
probably as many ways to get it done as there are people doing it.