Raster a Hairline?

[David Rust]

How do I raster a Hairline?
I'm want to raster an outline of a vector image that I reduced down quite a bit. At 0.5pt line width it loses some of the detail but looks great at "Hairline".

Thanks

[Dee Gallo]

You are not supposed to be able to raster a hairline. It will only vector cut a hairline. The only ways I think you can raster a very fine line is to use a bitmapped image or fill a box with black and eliminate the outline.

I could be wrong, dee

[Scott Shepherd]

Why not just vector it at lower power? Rastering super thin lines is always a problem. The laser doesn't have enough time to turn on, burn, and turn off in such a small distance.

[Steve Clarkson]

Try converting the outline to an object.

[David Rust]

ya.... after I posted this I did what Dee said... it worked fine... I should have tried it before I posted. Thanks for the responses!!

[Glen Monaghan]

Running it as a vector at appropriately high speed and low power to get the engraved depth you want without cutting through is the way to go. Much, much faster than rastering back and forth, line by line, especially for larger shapes.

[Albert Nix]

What Glen said plus 1. I do quite a few data plates that have a lot of text with fine line blocks around it. I can engrave them in a third the time if I leave the lines red and go with a higher speed and lower power.

[Jeff Greer]

This thread got me thinking about a process the former owners daughter would do.... to bold up text for like a name tag she would put a hairline boarder around the letters to make them " a little bit bolder"...well it would on the screen but if you think about it...it never made it to the part. Uuggghhh. Makes for a real pain when you window the part and vector the OD of the name plate and it is cutting letters. I have to "fix" a lot of files.

[Joe Hillmann]

This thread got me thinking about a process the former owners daughter would do.... to bold up text for like a name tag she would put a hairline boarder around the letters to make them " a little bit bolder"...well it would on the screen but if you think about it...it never made it to the part. Uuggghhh. Makes for a real pain when you window the part and vector the OD of the name plate and it is cutting letters. I have to "fix" a lot of files.

With a universal laser (at least with mine, newer ones might not) I found by accident I can rastor hair lines by having the entire drawing set up as hair lines with no color fill then print it with only rastor for that color selected rather than vector or rast/vect. I don't think it is actually a glitch rather than designed that way.

Although the final quality isn't the best.

[Martin Boekers]

This thread got me thinking about a process the former owners daughter would do.... to bold up text for like a name tag she would put a hairline boarder around the letters to make them " a little bit bolder"...well it would on the screen but if you think about it...it never made it to the part. Uuggghhh. Makes for a real pain when you window the part and vector the OD of the name plate and it is cutting letters. I have to "fix" a lot of files.

Jeff, I cheat like that on fonts that don't come in bold , but I make it bigger than a hairline. You could stay with a hairline then convert it all to a bitmap.

[Jeff Greer]

Jeff, I cheat like that on fonts that don't come in bold , but I make it bigger than a hairline. You could stay with a hairline then convert it all to a bitmap.

Yes - absolutely.....but this wasn't the case... I once asked her about laying out a round object for the rotary and her response " I use numbers and stuff...." ????

[matt aiken]

I will sometimes need to had a hairline to text to make it a bit "bolder" but before I run it I convert all outlined text to curves (ctrl+q) everytime before I run them and have not had any issues.

[Real Mercier]

If I need to make text bolder, I will add a contour to it of .002"-.003" or however much I want. Ready to go. The contour will be curves already and will weld any overlaps automatically.

Real Mercier