My First 3D Print - and a few questions

This is my first time printing 3D. I did this logo/crest for work and have wanted to do this since I did the art. I only had 1/4 inch Draftboard but I think the results are freaking awesome. I can’t wait to get hold of some thicker blanks to burn on.

Original art
Art

The results

Now to add a little paint to finish it off. Really looking forward to just day dreaming and making things happen because I can. Dan thank you, thank you, thank you, times infinity.

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Whoa! That turned out very nice! :grinning:

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I redid the artwork to be greyscale I see so many uses for the 3D engrave. Now I just need time and supplies!!! lol

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It depends on your tastes - but when using 3d engrave / vari-power, pure white won’t be lasered at all. In photoshop, it’s not too difficult to change those pure whites to one value darker.

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Thanks for your advice. I actually left the spots that you see on purpose. The shield has an arc that you can’t see. Part of this was an experiment to see just what I could do and accomplish and what would fail. This was done in a single pass. I have been reading that doing multiple passes actually renders better / cleaner results. Once I get some solid wood I’ll give that approach a shot.

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It came out great. Much better than my engrave into rubber. The rubber started out looking great, but slowly oozed into itself. Much better in wood.

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Were you trying to make a stamp out of the rubber?

I do have a few questions, this was literally like the 4th thing I have printed.

  1. Is there a way to align your cutlines and your artwork inside the interface?
  2. Is there a way to bring in a single file that can be broken into separate pieces. Currently I am breaking each piece out in illustrator / photoshop and bringing them in a piece at a time.

Nice work!

I’m off to bed, but will give you a quick bit of info. We have an amazing community here and I’m sure you’l get better help when everyone wakes up :slight_smile:

No, there’s no interface command to align artwork. (There should be though!) If you are talking about a file that has both rastor and vector pieces, you can try saving the aligned file as a PDF and importing int the GUI. The GUI can not process clippaths yet and personally I find PDFs a bit iffy in the GUI sometimes. It is certainly worth trying a PDF first though as you can import the file straight into the interface without having to manually align it.

My typical work flow is to make a master file in my program (Corel). When I’m ready to print it, I save the rastor portions as a PNG with transparency and the cut/score vector pieces as a SVG. I’ve gotten good at alignment and have a few trick I use, so it’s not a real issue for me. Another thing I do when saving my final rastor parts is to combine everything that’s going to be engraved into one last bitmap instead of smaller individual files.

YES! In short, the GUI uses colors to designate different operation in the GUI. If you are familiar with graphics programs, they typically use “layers” to group things together. The GF doesn’t use layers, instead it groups things by colors.

This explains it well.

and here too

You should start by spending time in the “Matrix” tutorial section. It has everything you need to get you started.

and here

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kittski Thanks for all the info!! Your a rockstar! I am a Corel user from way back. I started using it when it first came out in 89. I used it for years and years I did patent and journal art along with lots of illustrations and 3D animations for Navy’s Naval Architecture community. I just picked up a Surface Book 2. I’ll have to pick up a copy of Draw and start to reacquaint myself, Illustrator in my opinion is a poor mans Draw. I died a little when they stopped supporting the Mac. Sorry for the lament.

You have produced some killer stuff, I was admiring some of your work in another thread. I will be talking about how you created your fractal inlays I want to do a similar thing with the globe grid in the background of this piece when I do it in actual wood. Thanks again for the information look forward to getting to know you!

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This is great work.

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Thanks Jules, I have a lot to learn yet but I am really stoked about my GF!

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Thanks Pauline

[quote=“tactic9, post:12, topic:19801”]
I have a lot to learn yet [/quote]

You’re off to a great start! Nice piece of 3D :sunglasses:

Join the club! I have many tools that allow, and further my ability, but I never had one that inspires creativity like the GF.

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I’m an old time Corel user from decades ago too. Now using X8.

My kids are Illustrator folks though so I had to become bilingual so we could share work directly.

Then I started teaching classes on lasers and had to learn Inkscape so everyone could use the same software.

I still go back to Corel as my default though. There are several of us here :smiling_face:

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Can I ask what settings you used? I’ve been testing out engraves as well and mine tend to burn right off the bat and they often leave rough edges around raised shapes.

What an intricate logo! So glad you’re happy with your Glowforge. Looks like you got some answers to make you even happier. :slight_smile:

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Super design! the greyscale is awesome ! You have inspired me and cleared an obstacle in my thinking. Thanks !!

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