LED Acrylic Doesn't Lit/Glow All the way to the Top

I can only assume that his led was on brightest option and, his leds are stronger and or itā€™s a picture filter that gave itā€™s ā€œillusionā€ of being the entire image lit!

In other hand, for the light to travel through the acrylic, I would recommend you to do something similar to this one!

Yes. Thatā€™s exactly as I described it. :slight_smile:

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Sorry! Didnā€™t read all the messages!!:man_facepalming:t3:

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I did this today after reading the thread. I didnā€™t use the gradient. I uploaded the PDF of the spiderman template and used the glowforge 3d engrave setting ( no change to settings) for the medium proof acrylic. I outlined the template in illustrator with the pen tool and output that as an SVG in order to manually overlay the cut. I made the modification, to keep the arm within the acrylic.

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Looks great now.

Thank you for sharing.Looks great!! I havent had an oppurtunity to complete the changes and print today.But Impressed with your results.Agreed on the posts and suggestions to join the hand and leg to direct all the way to the hand(on the top).

In regards to your attempt, when you say - I uploaded the PDF of the spiderman template - you mean the following ? 1)you took a screenshot of the image from pinterest 2) You converted the jpg or png image snapshot into a PDF 3) then processed the cutline with the pen tool in illustrator 4) made svg of the same 5) converted back to an image for 3d engrave option ?? Is that right sequence ? Or you converted the final SVG file into a PDF and uploaded to glowforge ā€¦didnt know (or tried before) GF had 3d engraveā€¦will check tonight.

You can use the opposite trick to isolate parts of an engrave and light up specific sections. The vertical cuts separate the columns here and prevent much bleed from one column to the other:

To start, I just bought the GF last week. Iā€™m great with photoshop, so so with illustrator and use cad cam like meshmixer and fusion 360 regularly. So my biggest learning curve here is adapting to the glowforge app and figuring out what itā€™s quirks are.

I purchased the template from etsy and it came with the PDF, SVG, and Illustrator files. It took me some reading up on the GF app to realize that If I upload the PDF, I only get engrave settings. If I uploaded the SVG, it wanted to cut everyline. Iā€™m sure that I could have really spent the time to change the illustrator file and output an SVG that would engrave and cut, but it seems like alot of youtube videos struggle with this. Therefore, I did the following:

  1. uploaded the PDF and set it to engrave.
  2. opened the illustrator file in illustrator, outlined my cut with the pen tool, made that a path, deslected the rest of spiderman, so I only had the cut outline, and output that as my cut path SVG
  3. in the GF app, I uploaded the SVG to a second layer, which it set to cut.
  4. I manually overlayed the cut SVG outline over the engrave layer.

Iā€™m sure it might be a headache with harder to match items, but this seemed less time consuming that going back and forth in illustrator trying to see exactly what I had to change to get the GF app to recognize what I was trying to accomplish.

I guess Iā€™m just too impatient!
Thanks for all the insight and help everybody!

You can also export the spiderman artwork WITH the cut path into the same SVG file, which will eliminate the need to manually align in the GF app. All you need to do is make sure the cutting path is set to a different color than the spiderman artwork. The GF app will read the color assignment and make it another step.

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Thank you!! for the sequence of steps. I am going to try this as well.At this time,I am trying to learn the and understand the technique correct to make my own work with a baseline.So , I will try to convert the image to PDF and follow your sequence of steps to see how it differs from the gradient method.

With reference to the initial response and suggestions - Below is the output with gradient ( increasing by 10% - bottom to top (from 40% grey[bottom] - 100% black [top] - as posted in one of the pictures above). I wanted to tryout without the leg to hand cutline merge on for light travel. But with the gradient option - The spider web does look like a web :slight_smile:

I plan to make another with the suggested cut line and the pdf format and 3d engrave options.With few experiments I have done so farā€¦I expect the 3d engrave will definitely take longer time than this.I am happy with the current outputā€¦will see if I can put them side by side to compare in the next attempt.

Check it outā€¦thank you everyone!!! Its been an awesome learning experience.

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much improved!

I love the sharing of knowledge here. Do we already have a tutorial on this gradient technique in the Matrix?

Hi! Iā€™ve been trying to figure out how you did the gradient in Illustrator, as Iā€™m completely new and my googling hasnā€™t helped. Do you have a tutorial link to this?

There is a screenshot of where you set the stroke gradient in this thread, above.

Itā€™s one tab over from where you set stroke attributes.

I suppose Iā€™m having more fundamental problems. Hereā€™s what Iā€™ve figured out so far. You bring in your image. You create a gradient box behind it, then create a transparency mask. But I canā€™t figure out how to get a good gradient this way. Itā€™s always either too dark or too light.

Hi, hope you figured it by now and if otherwise

Gradient tab is all u need to be onā€¦and u notice the pens under the barā€¦they get generated as u click and u need to adjust them on the sliding bar to the level u preferā€¦click on the bar and u will notice them being added.I didnt follow any tutorial but just tweaked abit and it worked.

Iā€™m in the same boat as @barker_js as I cannot get the gradient to work. I have tried everything and it is just too light to work with the vary power settings listed above a few posts ago. Iā€™m also getting error messages in the GFUI like: This design contains a vector gradient.

Here are my steps in Adobe Illustrator CC:

  1. Place Image on Artboard
  2. Draw rectangle to serve as background (optional I know), Send to Back
  3. Select Image and goto Transparency Panel
  4. Double-Click on create opacity mask (blank box next to image)
  5. Open rectangle tool and draw rectangle just above the image (use wireframe view [CMD+Y])
  6. After rectangle is drawn, press CMD+Y again
  7. Goto gradient tool and click on linear gradient to apply opacity mask
  8. Press G to show gradient annotator and adjust to apply fade
  9. Go back to transparency panel and click image to stop editing
  10. Rasterize image again.

What am I doing wrong?

Sounds like you just need to adjust the start and end levels of the gradient to find settings that work for you.

Also, I donā€™t know about AI, but when you make a bitmap copy in Inkscape, it doesnā€™t remove the items you made a copy of, you have to do that manually (hence ā€œcopyā€ not ā€œreplaceā€) - so I suspect your vector gradient is still there underneath the bitmap.

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How did you choose the 3d engrave setting on this type of file? I am doing something similar with PG acrylic and donā€™t see the 3d setting available. Any idea why not?

Been a while on this oneā€¦but just checkedā€¦not sure if anything changedā€¦but i think we used to see 3d engrave option for pdf uploads as well.Either ways , if u have ur image readyā€¦Jpg upload shud give u 3d and deep 3d options in the settings for thick material.Hope that helps.