Help Please!

[Jules]

Okay your images didn’t load, but it doesn’t matter.

1.Start over with a fresh piece of cardboard and a fresh trace of the notebook. (Just the drawing on the cardboard.)

2. Trace it using the Glowforge trace function and cut it out. It doesn’t matter where it cuts, just cut it out of the cardboard. Take the cutout out of the hole.

3. Add your engrave or whatever you want to do to the file on screen by dragging and dropping it onto the open file. Do not under any circumstances shift the Pink Preview image of the cutout on the screen.

4. Align the engraving with the Pink Preview image on the screen. You will have to visually center the engraving, and move it using only the arrow keys on the keyboard…you don’t want to accidentally shift the pink cutout image.

5. Once you have it aligned and centered the way you want it…put the cutout piece of cardboard back into the hole…I wouldn’t have you test this on the notebook without a dry run to show you that it works.

6. Once you put the cardboard cutout back in the hole, set correct Engrave settings FOR CARDBOARD (use no more than 12% power and top speed) and send only the Engrave operation to Print. (Set any Cut operations to Ignore in the thumbnail column before you engrave.)

7. The design should engrave lightly on the cardboard in the correct location, and once you have seen that it is placed correctly, you can cancel the engrave by lifting the lid, or let it run. (Good idea to watch it though on cardboard.)

8. If the results of the test are accurate, remove the cardboard cutout and drop in the notebook.
   Set the correct Engrave settings for the notebook, and change the focal point in the engrave settings to match the thickness of the notebook. Then send the Engrave to process again with the correct settings.

That’s it. It sounds like a lot, but it really doesn’t take that much additional time, and after you get comfortable with the idea of aligning design additions with the pink preview, you don’t need to perform that middle test on the cardboard cutout.

Tutorials that deal with this are here:

Glowforge Interface - How to Align a Double Sided Engrave

I’m going to demo an alignment process below using my (ancient) version of Adobe Illustrator, but the process is the same for Inkscape or CorelDraw or Affinity Designer. Whichever one you like to use, you’ll do the same things, with the tools in that program. (I’m also going to give you the thought process that goes into creating a design with 2D Design software, to keep from having to write another one up, so if you can slog through it, you’ll pick up some stuff you need to know to make thing…

Tutorial - Batch Production With a Jig

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