I guess the purpose of testing is to stay consistent. I didn’t. This is actually a metallic photo paper that I cut upside down with a piece of thin backer board on the honeycomb (and mounted to the same chipboard). I probably had the speed a hair low (dropped to 180) and I could see pin holes in the sacrificial paper.
Some of the cuts came through really nice and you can barely see that a cut is there. Other parts (the majority) seemed to ablate some of the photo paper leaving more chip visible.
Love that metallic effect! (Gosh, you’ve got some gorgeous papers.)
When I ran cuts to test for focal point, I pretty consistently saw a much narrower kerf on the underside than I did on the top, when the FP was set on the surface of the material.
That shows a very narrow kerf on a few of the pieces, which I would expect, but a lot of them look pretty wide - do you think that’s because the paper was metallic and reflecting the heat around so a wider path got ablated? (Just mildly curious. It’s unexpected.)
The metallic paper is incredible. It needs the right lighting (diffused instead of accent/point lighting) but you get that right and it’s phenomenal.
I believe the way that they make it is with a very thin Mylar layer just beneath the paper surface that accepts the pigment. Even though it’s a very, very thin layer of it - I think Mylar is kind of melty, isn’t it?
Here I make stuff up. So, in this case, you’re needing enough power to cut through all of the material, but Mylar is sensitive to the power used to cut it. Perhaps 2 passes of faster and lower power would work better with this particular type of paper. From a production standpoint, that’s not a great alternative.
I haven’t really considered using this paper for my products - just another print I had laying around. But, if I could get all of the cuts like the clean ones, a “metallic” series would be cool and worth an upcharge.
Yeah, mylar is melty…my only exposure to it is sealing bags by melting it together. Maybe the two faster passes at lower power would work better for that.
I would be worth experimenting with for sure. Wow! is right.
Everything came through as one compound path - I released the compound paths and it actually cut line by line, like I was hoping (I also changed the strokes on the rows, columns and border, so I could order them separately)! The other generator I used creates compound paths out of line segments - and the Glowforge picks up on this (from the SVG code) and it sporadically jumps around.
Moderately unique (and it also has some options to play with). I don’t know how much uniqueness you’ll get out of a generator, honestly. I think it would work quite well for smaller piece counts/easier puzzles.
Ultimately, from a design stand point, hand drawn is going to get you further along from a uniqueness perspective than generated. It’s just significantly more work.
It would. I don’t have a stand-alone ruler/square/straight edge large enough though the sheets I buy are 35x46”. And the x-acto will definitely work - it is basically the same thing as the straight-edge cutter. The straight-edge cutter just uses a standard razor blade.
The circular saw produced edges that weren’t as nice as with the mat cutter - but I also had the blade a bit deep, IIRC. While this isn’t real important - I use the cut sheet as a jig against the left rail of the crumbtray. So having a clean, flat edge just makes it easier for me to know that it’s squared up to the rail well.
The mat cutter works well to hold the piece because it has the bottom rail to keep one location and then the guide bar that swings down on the material helps hold it in place. I don’t have a great set up for holding the material in place using a circular saw.
A panel saw set up might be nice for doing stuff like this. Or, what would be really nice is just having a frame to drop the material into that used a large die and would just be done with the sheet
I have the same size stock I use but I use a wallboard aluminum T-square that’s 4’ long. They’re not that expensive and store flat.
I also use a rotary cutter because I get a better cut than when I use a utility knife or xacto but that’s because my fine motor skills in keeping the blade tight against the straightedge aren’t as good as when I was more coordinated
Cutting the thick stuff like that, it’s very hard to keep the blade aligned to the edge. A rotary cutter would be perfect. I use my rotary to trim pieces for other purposes. Now I wonder if I could find a rotary that could ride the mat cutter rail… hmm.
I already had the mat cutter so it wasn’t an additional expense to me. A long t-square like you mention would definitely be cheaper.
this is one of those times where working at an architecture firm has it’s perks. i have a 36" table cutter and a 60" standing rotary cutter available to me. not sure if that rotary is heavy enough to cut the chipboard (but i’m going to test that). i’ve definitely cut heavy illustration board on the table cutter.
(Gosh, you’ve got some gorgeous papers.)
the sheets I buy are 35x46”. And the x-acto will definitely work - it is basically the same thing as the straight-edge cutter. The straight-edge cutter just uses a standard razor blade.