Requirements for a laser cut vector drawing?
For all the drawings:
► The maximum size of the template should be 600mm wide and 300mm high.
► If a drawing contains multiple layers, it may be unclear what should and should not be cut. Avoid confusion and merge all. Remove support lines and comment that should not be cut/engraved out of the drawing. Remove all, even invisible, layers, shapes and pictures used as a basis and no longer needed.
► Remove double lines in the drawing. If there are two lines (on top of each other) in the drawing, the laser will cut them both. So make sure lines do not overlap. For example if you put two squares together, clear one side of one of the squares.
► The color of the lines and planes must be RGB and the opacity (alpha value) must be set to 100%. If it is transparent, even a tiny bit, the laser skips the lines, or engraves the planes with less power.
► Due to the burning away of the material cutting loss (cut width or kerf) occurs. This is different for each material. For wood and acrylic from 3mm to 5mm we hold a cut width of about 0.155mm. The laser will always cut across the center of the line.
► Please note: the cutting loss is dependent on the material and the thickness of the material. For something 'snap-fit' to fit, we recommend that you first make a test on the material in question.
► Make sure that pictures and images are really 'embedded' in the file, and are not linked externally. Then you save your vector drawing, but we do not get the pictures!
► Put text fonts in the drawing to a vector line (path), otherwise the texts will open on our computers in a simple Helvetica font. This will ensure that the text won't be cut in the wrong font!
► If you want to cut out a letter, note that you use a font that is suitable. Most fonts with characters having an enclosed part, will fall as one part out of your material. Such as eg in e, p, or a. Fonts who do get cut properly are called Stencil fonts (also called Army fonts).
► Beware of tiny shapes. Which can go up by the cutting loss or objects with a size of less than 5mm, will fall through the frame of the machine. Therefore, we can not guarantee that we will actually send them!
Laser Engraving
If a field in the drawing is uniform in color, the laser cutter will engrave the entire area with the same power. If the field is a picture made up of gray scale, the laser cutter will vary its power based on the grayscale. Colors in a color photograph will be read by the machine as a grayscale.
So use filled areas in your drawing. Filled with black, color or grayscale.
► Note: use full RGB black where you want to use the full power of the laser for engraving.
► Illustrator uses a CMYK color pattern, make sure you change this to RGB. Black in CMYK is not completely black in RGB, so check the RGB color values. It may be that you do not get the same result, because the laser engraves with less power in the 'not realy' RGB black areas.
► A vector line that should be engraved, should have to be at least 0.5mm wide, otherwise the software does not see it as a 'area'.
Laser Cutting
Color of the vector lines: RGB red (255,0,0) or RGB blue (0,0,255). First of all the laser cuts the red paths, then the blue.
Thickness of the vector lines: 0.1mm. Thicker lines are not recognized by the software as cutting line.
► Please note that we often get drawings in which the line is not a stroke of 0.1 mm, but a fill. If we were going to send this to the laser, the laser would cut each line twice, because on both sides of the fill is a stroke!
Laser Marking
Color of the vector lines: RGB red (255,0,0) or RGB blue (0,0,255). First of all the laser cuts the red paths, then the blue.
Thickness of the vector lines: 0.1mm. Thicker lines are not recognized by the software as cutting line.
In the software of the laser cutter you can adjust the power and speed, to get the desired operation (cutting through the material or marking the surface of the material).