So I’ve been futzing with the GF a bit. Here’s a pic of this weekend’s adventure (so far).
I did address some stink reduction as well so things are going swimmingly.
I ran into a couple of issues today. The first was with my Center Ruler - it’s a 0 centered scale so you can drop it on something and find the center without math My problem was with the print. I did the rectangle of the ruler in black and the letters/numbers and tick marks in red. I uploaded, told the GFUI to cut black and engrave red. It cut the black and engraved the letters (vector paths) and numbers. It did not engrave the tick marks. So I redid the tick lines with a thicker strokes (went from .01mm to .1mm). Ran it again. Same results. So I went back and changed the text to blue, uploaded it again, told GFUI to engrave blue and score red (ticks). Worked. But, the Founder Rule does what I originally tried so not sure what’s up.
The coasters are Tai Chi hands (a takeoff of the yin/yang). The wooden one is maple ply. Nice engrave. The stained cork coaster is an unmasked print. Also used 225 lpi on that one. The cleaner thin cork coaster was masked with painters tape and was very clean until I brushed the black “dust” from the engrave. The thick coaster was 195 LPI and masked with tape.
Operator error on my part - I had the laser seriously defocused for the thin coasters. I used my digital calipers and just typed in what was on the display - 0.330". That was for a 1/8" coaster. When I was micing the 1)4" coaster I did a dope slap. The calipers were messed up (I did zero it but it was reading wrong all the way down its length). Tossed those and pulled out another set. All was well after that.
The ship in a bottle is standard Baltic Birch (not Proofgrade).
Thanks. I needed a ruler that was in “the other” measurement system too Here’s where a laser can become a time-sink. The center ruler took over an hour. Each print iteration was almost 15 minutes. I figured I’d knock it out fast and bingo, there goes an hour working through “why doesn’t it work?”.
Very nice. The sheer quantity of things rolling out now is making it hard to wait it if I have to wait I might as well be seeing the things I’ll be able to do!
I’m torn myself. Easy to clean off the smoke stains with an orbital sander (I use a random orbit palm sander for control) but I kind of like the look it gives it. I’m thinking maybe a couple of yellow film pieces glued on the back for lit windows.
omg, center ruler, whyyyyy have I never thought of that?
I have used the string / piece of paper trick, though, where you take a string, or a piece of paper, and cut it to the full length of an item, and then fold it in half, to get the exact 1/2 measurement in a physical form.
My wife likes using them for needlepoint so she doesn’t have to fold the fabric (which has lots of issues with precision ) I like them for wood working - finding the center of things is very handy and saves time - I don’t really care what the ordinal measure is (5cm or 3in or whatever) - I can count how far from the 0 point the edge is on one side and match it on the other.
I’m going to reupload mine - I saw the hint about making the ticks extend beyond the edge of the ruler so the scoring dot doesn’t burn thru. Didn’t want to futz with 50 tick marks but then I realized all I have to do is pull the top of the box down a skoche and the scoring dot would be on the other side of the cut. Duh - dope slap!
“Engrave” only works with closed paths. If you ask it to engrave an open path (like a thick stroke), it will silently ignore your request and skip the step. Thanks to your awesome bug report, the engineering team has it in the todo list.
That’s what I would have expected except that the Founder Rule seemed to be setup the same (which is why I ignored my normal closed-path training ). How do you engrave the ticks on that ruler? Are those really thin boxes so it’s a watertight shape?
I would say they have to be very small boxes with the side strokes very close together that you can’t see it in the GFUI. Since the numbers are clearly vectors and the operation can be converted into a score, they must be closed paths but very thin boxes, as you have probably surmised. You can really make some thin boxes here!
My problem was with the print. I did the rectangle of the ruler in black and the letters/numbers and tick marks in red. I uploaded, told the GFUI to cut black and engrave red. It cut the black and engraved the letters (vector paths) and numbers. It did not engrave the tick marks. So I redid the tick lines with a thicker strokes (went from .01mm to .1mm). Ran it again. Same results. So I went back and changed the text to blue, uploaded it again, told GFUI to engrave blue and score red (ticks). Worked. But, the Founder Rule does what I originally tried so not sure what’s up.
). How do you engrave the ticks on that ruler? Are those really thin boxes so it’s a watertight shape?