Continuing the discussion from I did the silicon apple watch strap thing:
I can’t promise these will work on every strap, they worked with my design on the strap I bought (and I feel like it may have been slightly deeper than i’d like. But enough people have asked that i’d rather start a BTM post than PM everyone.
Thanks!
i just used these settings and saved them… exactly what i needed thanks.
any tips on clean up after engraving?
Hi! I just purchased a GlowForge and I’m trying to figure out how you sized the design ( I purchased couple SVG files) to your Apple watchband? Did you get a SVG file of a watch band and then attempt to fit your design onto it via Inkscape? I have no clue how to engraved a whole design throughout the entire band! Thank you!
i drew the outline by hand in Illustrator based on measurements. the way you get the pattern to go across the entire band is to make it larger than the band and have the engrave “bleed” off the edge of the band.
Thank you… I’m trying to figure it out in Inkscape with SVG file of watchband and SVG file of design…I appreciate you answering so quickly.
my file looks like this:
you can see where the design “bleeds” off the edge. that allows the engrave to run through the outer edge.
Oh wow! Ok! So your design was just a regular SVG file that you cut onto your watchband design in adobe illustrator? Can I achieve the same in Inkscape or I have to sign up to illustrator? Ok hank you so much! I’ve been freaking out all day trying to fit my design on my watchband!
yes, you can do the same in inkscape.
I sent the red outline and gray engrave to GF (black circles were just for my reference in the illustrator file so i could see how the pattern laid out, I didn’t export them to the GFUI.
the red line in my file i cut out of a sheet of cardboard that was held down to the honeycomb with magnets to keep it in place as a jig. i opened the lid, pulled out the cut pieces of cardboard and put the strap in the same spot without moving the cardboard jig, then ran the engrave. that ensures the positioning is exact.
Thank you so much!
Lastly, my pattern SVG file is it supposed to already be cropped in the shape of the watchband or in can be any shape that I can try to fit to a watchband?
it needs to be a t least a little bit larger if you want it to bleed off the edge. but it will go a lot faster if you can delete any additional parts that you don’t need engraved. otherwise you’re just going to engrave a lot of that onto the cardboard.
Ok thank you! But I can use this file and just fit it onto a SVG file of a watch band? I just need to learn how to fit that onto the shape of the watchband… that’s where I’m lost… I just got my GlowForge today so maybe I need to chill a lil!
you can, it will just engrave a lot more than the band area and take a whole lot longer than if you clean it up to be just a little bit larger than the band.
it may take some time to learn how to manipulate files in Inkscape, which I would suggest spending a little time on. There are some tutorials here in tips and tricks and videos online. I use different illustrator, so I’m not familiar with the interface for inkscape.
while the GF is reasonably easy to use for a laser cutter, the more complicated the project you want to do, the more you’ll need to know how to manipulate files in a vector program like inkscape.
Thank you!
Hi! I somewhat was able to fit my image SVG to a Apple band watch SVG and group both and transfer to my GlowForge dashboard. I’m engraving it now but it says 1 hour and 1 mins and I read you saying it took you 38 mins. I used your setting as well. Material I put custom and thickness 0.4 for the band. Don’t know if I did something wrong for the engraving to take over an hour vs 38 mins?
if your bands are turned the direction mine are in the photo, it will probably take longer. i rotated it in the UI to be horizontal. it’s always faster to engrave when the longer direction is horizontal instead of vertical, because every line the machine engraves, it has to slow down and speed back up every time it hits the left and right end.
i don’t know if that would account for more than 2x the engrave time, but that’s the only thing i could think of if you have all the settings exactly the same.
Thx u!
Thank you! Community sent me here for question Beyond the manual in regards with PNG engraving settings. Would u used convert to dot, convert to pattern or vary power for the watchband project? Thank you
