For exterior corners, you can still over-cut to ensure that the final piece is consistent. So with a folding paper artwork that has minimal interior voids, hopefully one can avoid a fair amount of time on engrave.
Also, people who try doing paper this way need to keep the raster process in mind when preparing the engrave. If you were doing something like a motorcycle, then you would want to have each wheel be a different color for engraving purposes. Then the raster passes back and forth over each wheel from bottom to top individually. If both wheels are the same color, then the raster will pass over the large void between the wheels each pass, thus taking longer.
So… double exterior corners you can over-cut for consistent vector engraving and higher output speed. And avoid engraving across large sections that will remain untouched by the laser by using multiple colors (with the same settings) for various sections of the artwork.
Neither of these time saving options were possible in the bird head from the initial post. And likely won’t often be available in any paperwork. Which is why it is important to be aware of them when it IS possible.
Completely missed this in August. Awesome and thanks!
I really need a book with all these types of tips and tricks in it. I know we have the tips and tricks section but I love books and it’s easy to find stuff in them with indexes and table of contents. I keep coming back here to find stuff and struggle to find what I read 1 month to 6 months ago and can’t remember all the details. A lot of people with units recommend doing up designs and learning software. My recommendation is to save all these tips and tricks so you don’t have to find them again.
There have been quite a few posts on this subject. Do a search using the terms ‘burn paper setting’ to get started. Here are a couple of topics you will find:
The topic this post is posted in of course. Maybe you should reread it. If you’d like more ideas here’s another topic:
I have used this for a range of papers, including cardstock, construction paper, copy paper, and the textured paper that I used in the tea lights that I made. It sounds like you might need to lower the power or increase the speed a bit if you are seeing scorch marks.
We generally use something like a Seklema matt to hold the paper down. (You can make your own a lot cheaper with a can of Krylon 7020 repositionable adhesive and a sheet of scrap plywood.)
Just clarifying, was this using the “engrave” option? Your output looks perfect – I haven’t spent a LOT of time on paper yet, but have never achieved anything that didn’t have some visible charring at the edges.
