Design for Any Laser

ael Horton, Party of 4 Crafts

CorelDraw:

Separates by colors and then you decide what each color does.

What you can learn from this is that although most laser programs give you the freedom to choose what each color does, K40Whisperer does not. Therefore, if you stick with the K40W palette of colors, it will work with every other software, too. So, I set all of my cuts to red, my scores to blue, and my engraves to black.

Separations

Glowforge:

Separates by colors and then you decide what each color does.

Many people purchase files because they do not want to learn to use design software on their own If you have a file that requires multiple materials and you include them all in the same SVG, the user will have to open them all and copy and paste the components into separate files for the different materials before they can use it That is NOT laser ready. Save each of your designs as separate files for each material (eg. One file for clear acrylic, one for red acrylic, and one for whiteboard).

These stadium files required two types of wood and acrylic, therefore each design included multiple files.

GweikeCloud Offline:

Separates by colors and then you decide what each color does

ProperSize

Ifyour design has pieces that fit together, it is important that the size of your design remains stable when you load it into the laser software. There are well-known issues continued, click here

Laser-related Facebook Groups

TOP 10 by Number of Members and Engagement

Laser Engraving And Cutting @ 60k members

New to Laser Engraving @ 56.7k members

Glowforge & Lasers for Crafters @ 49.2k members

Glowforge Users Group (GUG) @40.8k members

Glowforge Makers @ 40.6k members

Glowforge World @ 34.3 members

Will’s Laser Supply Sales Group @ 31.8k members

That Mom with a Laser @ 30.9k members

Free CNC & Laser Engraving files sharing ( SVG DXF AI EPS ) @21.2k members

Photo Laser Engraving @ 20.3k members

Laser-Related YouTube Channels

When I was both shopping and new to lasers these were four of the first YouTube channels I watched. Submit who you watch and the top 4 mentioned will be listed in the next issue!

That Mom With a Laser

Laser Engraving by Matt

85th and Pine

Custom Grains and Designs

Design... continued from previous page about Illustrator and Inkscape SVG files (and I assume others as well) resizing when imported into some of these programs There are plenty of YouTube videos to show you how to handle that. PDF files seem to preserve the dimensions of your file, so offering a PDF option for these files is always a good idea.

Summary

To make your files “laser ready” for the most lasers possible, use the color palette of red things cut, blue things score, and black things engrave To ensure that your files open properly in the most laser software programs, offer it in SVG, DXF, and PDF formats Do this and your files will truly be laser ready and your customers will love your shop for it

Michael Horton is the proprietor of Party of 4 Crafts

Find him on Etsy, the Friendliest Glowforge Group on Facebook, Youtube, the Partyof4Crafts website, and Instagram by going to his Linktree site

What is MDF?

MDF stands for Medium Density Fiberboard It is manufactured sheet of wood that is essential composed of sawdust (fine particles) and glu For Glowforge users, it is commonly known a draftboard Lighter-colored MDF tends to cu better, which means it usually cuts faster an leaves clean edges (meaning no soot or charrin on edges that need to be wiped). That is not t say that darker materials can’t cut, they ju normally cut slower and leave the charr on th edges.