Can you please send me the settings also? I can’t find it anywhere.
there is a link to the settings in the first post.
Sorry
Thank you! this was super helpful!
Hi! I just purchased a GlowForge and I’m trying to figure out how you sized the design ( I purchased couple SVG files) to your Apple watchband? Did you get a SVG file of a watch band and then attempt to fit your design onto it via Inkscape? I have no clue how to engraved a whole design throughout the entire band! I am quite confused
If you have a design bought what you would need to do is go to the GlowForge app and size it there. For this you would not need to go into Inkscape to resize the design. You can do that more accurately in the GlowForge app. Take your apple watchband and make sure it is secure in the GlowForge and held down so it doesn’t move. You can use honeycombs to do that ( Honeycomb bed holdown pins This is not my design but I have it and it works really well). Zoom in close to the apple watchband on the GlowForge app and align it how you want it.
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Hi! Thx u… I tried and I created a design I shaped into a watch band outline and export it as PNG and upload as png… for some reason when I saved it as a SVG in Inkscape and then upload on my GF app, the pattern disappeared. As a PNG, it looked perfect but when I engraved it, it was very shallow, barely there… is it because it is PNG instead of SVG? I’m new to GF… any suggestion? Thx u
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if your pattern is not black, when you engrave it as a bitmap it won’t be as deep. if it’s grey or a color, the lighter it is, the lighter the engrave will be. so make sure it’s black before you convert to bitmap.
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Thx u! I’ll try this today!
So what’s red on my pic I need to switch to black before saving as PNG and turn upload is not GF?
yes.
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Thx u!! I’ll try it later today! I truly do appreciate ur help and your super quick reply!
Hi! I found a conversion software to switch my PNG to SVG so I’m set there… now my issue I can’t figure out is how to split steps in GlowForge… my design in Inkscape clearly shows my fill ( pattern in red), and my outline shape watchband as navy. But when I transfer in GF, it all together and I can only enter 1 setting. I’m trying to have two separate settings so I can ignore the outline because I only use it to align correctly. Thx u!
There are two types of engraving. One is when you have a vector shape and it is filled with one color. The glowforge will allow you to assign a different group of settings for each color. Every pixel in the engrave gets the same exact amount of laser power, as per your group of settings for that color. The second type is a bitmap. Here the glowforge uses one group of settings and varies the amount of power based on the color of the pixel. The maximum power of your settings for pure black, no power for pure white and everything else something inbetween.
When you convert something to PNG, you are making a bitmap. As the outline of the strap is part of the PNG export, it is part of the bitmap and it will be engraved.
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(Side note - Vector engraved areas don’t require fill, only that they are enclosed shapes. I never use fill. Obviously, you have to set that step to engrave, not cut.)
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What am I my doing wrong? My design in Inkscape looks like I needed too, but when I transfer on GF, the pattern is gone, turned into solid fill into the object.
Looks like you have a watch-strap-shaped-vector object with a non-white fill color.
If you can post the file here it should be fairly easy to figure out what went wrong where. I don’t have any easy speculation at the moment.
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Ok! I’ll recreated cuz I scrapped that file… it will take a minute
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Now I can’t recreate anything have been doing for past 2 weeks… I really start to despise Inkscape and GF🤦♀️
The pattern design shows fill: red
Stroke red: red
The outline ( watchband shape): fill: none
Stroke: navy
When I ligned them up before “save as”, it shows fill: different, stroke: looks like a mix of the navy and red previously used, so like burgundy
That’s because you have 8 different objects selected, with different fill and stroke settings. Stroke is giving you “average” (the ‘a’ to the left.)
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