Resolution, not what I'd like it to be, suggestions?

I made some tokens in appreciation for fellow employees that have joined me on a game night this year, and I’m not getting quite the results I’d like. I was using SD Graphic, and that might be my main issue. I started with HD Graphic, and I thought it was engraving way too deep, so I switched to SD (thinking this was analogous to the Graphic (Expiring Soon!) vs Dark Graphic (Expiring Soon, also!). My bad, but even with HD, it seemed like the engraving was VERY deep. As far as the depth, I might just switch to manual and reduce the power, but even with HD, I was losing the little loop in the lower case E in some areas (the second “e” in Discere is particularly “c” shaped). Is my design just too small (scaled down to approx 1.5 inch diameter)? The photo isn’t ideal, but hopefully gets the point across. I have a scanner coming in (by 8pm today!) if higher resolution would aid. I guess this is more of a design question. I think that the thickness of some of these font objects is approaching the width of a human hair, but we’re supposed to be “less than that”, right? :slight_smile: GC TIpper

EDIT: Well, the SVG doesn’t quite look like it does when I work with it… am I attaching it wrong? (feeling like more and more of a noob, compared to my earlier “I’m learning Illustrator!!!” exultation… )

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I’m afraid it’s that font at the size you’re printing. I brought the SVG file into Illustrator, sized it to the 1.5 inches you mentioned printing at and this is what I see on a decent monitor:

GCTipper

You’ll note that I drew a line that is the laser kerf width (edit: see @scott.wiederhold response below) in across your image. and then zoomed in for comparison. I’m guessing the text on a curve isn’t helping here since the “e” two characters over looks more solid. Also for comparison, the heavy red arc is 1 Pt width.

Edit: human hair is approx. .003 in diameter FWIW

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The forum software removes embedded style sheets from SVG files for security reasons. If you change your SVG saving options to “Presentation Attributes”, you will be able to attach them here without losing all the colors, fills, and strokes.

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Noob level, decreasing. Thanks very much for the help! I wonder if leaving the text as text, resizing in illustrator, then creating outlines, would preserve a bit more, rather than outlining first, and then scaling. Things to try. Thanks again!

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You must have the Super Pro Extra Deluxe edition! :rofl:

The kerf on my Basic is .008" on average, depending on the material.

(Of course, that was the last time I measured it. There have been many cloud changes since then, including changes to the way the focus works, so I’m probably due for a re-measure).

That would be cool wouldn’t it? I should have looked for a second reference :slight_smile: Thanks.

Either way… that “e” isn’t going to print right.

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I’m far from knowledgeable on the topic (but I Google with the best of them)…

I think the lowest theoretical kerf is equal to the wavelength of the photon. In the case of CO2, that is somewhere around .0004".

Here’s to hoping for a future software update!

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In case your scale/outline switch doesn’t work, here’s my suggestion:

If you like the way one of the other Es is printing (looks like “est” has one that turned out well), I’d just ungroup everything, grab a copy of the good E, and replace the problem Es with it throughout your design. Leave the bad E in place, align the good one on top, then object > arrange > send to back the good E so you can easily delete the bad one. Oh, and it’s useful to change the color of one of the objects so you can see which one you’re grabbing and deleting.

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Awesome suggestion! Illustrator had always intimidated me, but it’s an amazing bit of software, and I’m picking it up fairly quickly now that I have such a glowy motivation to do so!

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I love Illustrator, have been using it forever, and am so amused at how much I don’t know when it comes to efficiently prepping AI files for the GFUI. I agree, it’s great motivation for learning!

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I figured it out!!! When saving as SVG, there’s a Show More Options button that I hadn’t noticed. When it was saving, it was saving to 1 decimal place, rather than 3 (as shown in a post by Jules here: Glowforge Interface - Correctly Save a File as an SVG for the GFUI 🤔 ). My assumption is that it was rounding widths and who knows what up or down as it was saving the SVG, causing all sorts of chaos :smiley:

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I use 3 or 4. I think it actually supports up to 8 or 9? One is typically used from a web perspective, I believe, since every decimal place increases file size.

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Well done! Good to know about the more options setup – it’s not something I’ve ever had to dig into before.