Cutting a bevel

[eric12]

Has anyone tried recently to create a slight bevel with the Glowforge by varying the power/depth of cut progressively inward? I saw this thread: Angled cuts via engraving but it was from a few years back, though it talks about gradients on the image being applied as different powers in the software? Again, the idea would be that it might be slightly stair-stepped instead of totally smooth, but for something thin maybe you wouldn’t have too much stair-stepping?

Thanks!

[evansd2]

@rbtdanforth has been going deep on 3d engraves lately… he might have some advice.

[kittski]

I think there’s been several talks about it. Have you read through these yet?

https://community.glowforge.com/search?q=bevel

And this teaser from @cynd11

Teaser: Mitered Cuts

…for a project I’m working on… [image]

This seems pretty good too

GF and 3DS Max Experimentation

Yes, ultimately there will always be some stair-stepping so it comes down to how much is acceptable versus the ability for the GF app to read however many paths it takes to create it. Here’s a thread I posted in July 2017 with some bevel tests.

[Jules]

No, that’s @cynd11…she’s our bevel expert!

[kittski]

Oh opps, I saw the yellow of the avatar and thought it was a hedgie

[cynd11]

Hahaha! People think we’re sisters!

Actually this post might be of more interest, if it’s custom bevel cuts in mats that are of interest:

Custom Mat for Photo Frame

Just fooling around with some crappy waste matboard to see if I can get a nice bevel on a custom cut. Turns out I can! Not perfect, and the cut edge is dark instead of light, but very usable. This is the first iteration, I already know of some changes I want to make on the next try, but thought you’d like to see: [FullSizeRender] [IMG_5323] It’s hard to see the bevel in the photo, but it does look pretty cool. This one is shallower than the standard 45 degrees, that’s easy to fix. I’m pla…

[rbtdanforth]

@evansd2

he might have some advice.

In Gimp you can create a path along the edge of a white selection area and draw a line along the path that of course only show up inside the selection mask. A Gaussian blur of a defined width will create even shading of that width and a bevel when engraved.

[eric12]

Thank you all. It sure seems from the posts here and other posts that you can attempt a bevel with a 3D engrave to some degree. I think now I just need to learn how in the software to do a 3D engrave like @evansd2 mentioned, but I can probably wait a week or so until my machine arrives so I can play with it and it making 3D engraving may be more obvious than I think

Thanks!

[evansd2]

@eric12

just need to learn how in the software to do a 3D engrave like @evansd2 mentioned

Good news: scroll back up and read what @rbtdanforth said, he gave you pretty detailed instructions about how to get started. As you get more into it, you’ll probably want to learn a bit more about what kind of gradients your blur functions put on your art, are they linear or logarithmic, etc. In theory linear gradients make flat slopes in engraves, but that’s just in theory – your material choice and thickness will matter a lot more than the gradient probably. @rbtdanforth has a lot more practical experience on this than I do, so I am just going on general theory.

[eric12]

Perfect. Looking forward to trying this once I get my unit!

[rbtdanforth]

@eric12

Looking forward to trying this once I get my unit!

Before getting the unit I would be practicing with Gimp and Inkscape so that when you have the Glowforge you are ready to go.