Worked on a few items this evening to get a better feel for the GF, and figure out how to best approach things. Several lessons learned.
First, I cut and engraved a plaque from 1/8 PG Maple for the twins’ godparents who will be visiting us tomorrow. I then cut a family cross for us and two wine glass name trinkets for our guests. Finally, I tested non PG engraving. I engraved a bamboo cutting board I picked up from the dollar store for our guests, using settings suggested by @Jules. I forgot to mask it, but it came out ok. I need to test other engrave settings to speed up the process while maintaining acceptable quality. I also engraved a 1/8" thick wooden nickel using a cardboard jig.
I had problems with the plaque because the image of the twins was flagged as an unsupported format (jpg embedded in an svg). I finally ignored that image and engraved, scored and cut the rest. Then I loaded in a jpg with the twins and eyeball scaled it and placed it over the original image on the plaque, and finished the printing process.
One of the important lessons about painting engraved areas through a mask is to let the paint completely dry before weeding. Otherwise, you could remove paint too and also might accidentally smear paint onto areas not intended to be painted.
One thing I tried for the plaque to save time was scoring the sunrise and also the squiggly frame that encircles the text, etc. I then removed the mask ONLY from the sun and the squiggly fill area, and painted them. Much faster than letting them engrave and then painting.
One of the angels in the plaque was double engraved for some reason. There is a spurious line in the bird on the cross that was not visible when I placed that graphic in the original Illustrator file. The Illustrator version of the cross had an inner score offset from the cutout shape of the cross, however, it offset less than I expected so it can’t be seen. Need to study the files so I can address these issues for future projects.
I also need to try my hand at a monoline font and score some text so it will be faster. I want to make a bunch of personalized crosses for others, and engraving will take too long.
Working with tiny cutouts like the charms was a little tough. I had to be extra careful in extracting them so they would not break.
I also tried my hand at doing a jig cut, for a two side wooden nickel. I had purchased a bunch of 1 1/2" blanks online so I cut a 1 1/2" hole in a piece of cardboard on the tray using a circle svg I created in Illustrator. I then removed the cardboard circle and dropped in the unmasked wood disk, and engraved a Round Tuit. I flipped the wood disk to engrave the other side. With a magnifying glass, I can read the tiny print. Next time I will use a circle in the same file as the text so I can be sure it’s all aligned. Eyeballing it was close but not perfect when I placed the graphic in the GFUI.
Tomorrow, I start on projects I need to assemble.
