Big file won't cut every time

[dystracktd]

I have a file with a lot of text for a recipe on a cutting board that won’t cut every time. It has worked twice, but every other time I have to break it up into sections to get it to go. I also get two errors, one is there are a lot of colors or something like that, and the other just says unexpected error, with no further details. Has anyone else experienced this or does anyone have a suggestion on how to make this work better? Attached, I have the multi-color file and a single color SVG files. If someone has an idea I can share the illustrator files, but they were too big to share together.

Cutting Board SVG.zip (3.5 MB)

[hansepe]

Turn them into PNG files and use that to do your engraving. you’ll be happy with the results.

[coalakida]

Strange it will not get past the printing scan , and it keep giving me a material error on draft board. lol

To many colors is causing it to reject the order.

What is the reason for so many colors being used on the Print.

[Tom_A]

You have a few options on how, but ultimately what will likely help is reducing the number of colors. You can do that in your image editing app by, perhaps, first reducing the noise, and then reduce the number of colors. You want to find a setting that will reduce it to as few colors as possible while not making your text look jagged. Or, you can use your vector editing app and try tracing what you have. Often there are settings that will smooth out your tracing so there’re no jaggies and you’ll get everything nice and clean.

Just some food for thought. Perhaps others have better/other ideas.

[dystracktd]

There is a file with 1 color also. I did the multi-color because I was having to turn off everything and only laser one section at a time to get it to print.

[dystracktd]

See my above comment about the multi-color file.

I might try a different font. There is a lot going on with that font and maybe that’s causing my problem. I’ll give this a try tonight.

[geek2nurse]

The “unexpected” error is most likely due to the large number of nodes in the design. Here’s just one little letter of it:

As @hansepe said, rasterizing and engraving would be your best bet, and I’m betting it would look nicer with engraved rather than scored letters, too!

[jbmanning5]

What are you wanting to do with this? Are you converting it to an engrave? Running a score? Do you want the outline of the letters or them filled in?

First thing I noticed is that it has over a 1/4 million points.

Second, it’s hard to say the length of time this is going to take for an engrave; it’s about 10x10", so depending on what you’re chosen for an LPI, you could be exceeding the onboard storage/job length (3.5 hours or so).

I would switch it to a fill, rasterize at 600 DPI and engrave there, probably around 225LPI, and it should go just fine, every time.

[ca_worth]

How did you know how many points the file had?

[dystracktd]

The whole thing is engrave. I’ve been able to get this to print 2 times as a single file. It takes about 2.5 hours to print. The other times I’ve had to break it up into sections, that’s why there is a multi-color file.

I’m going to change the font to a smoother font, if that doesn’t work I’ll do the raster version.

[jbmanning5]

How did you know how many points the file had?

In Illustrator, go to Window > Document Info

The whole thing is engrave. I’ve been able to get this to print 2 times as a single file. It takes about 2.5 hours to print.

I’ve seen that moving things around on the bed can alter the total time for the project.

If you’re sold on the font, just rasterize it. If you do a high enough PPI, you won’t be able to discern a difference between the engraves.

[jbv]

I used Object>Path>Simplify set to 100% Curve Precision on the bulk of the text to get the node count way down, and switched the stroke to fill. I also expanded the decorative shapes, and deleted all the hidden layers save for the cutting-board shape(in case you are using that for alignment).

Down from 253,584 nodes to 28,206. Loads fine for me in the GFUI. I would probably run this at 270 lpi (i.e: SD Engrave on med maple ply) , which should take about an hour.

[dystracktd]

Amazing. Thank you for taking the time and lending your expertise.

[dystracktd]

Thanks everyone for the support.

[jbv]

My pleasure. Object>Path>Simplify is a powerful tool (that is really easy to miss since it’s buried in menus).

One note on the recipe:
make sure you use ground mace, not the other kind…

[jeremy5]

Thanks for the answer @jbv, that’s right. I’m going to close this thread - if the problem reoccurs, go ahead and post a new topic. Thanks for letting us know about this!