Vinyl flooring

I want to use my GF to make tile flooring for my dollhouse. I want to cut pieces of vinyl/linoleum tiles that can be purchased at Home Depot and the like. I’ll be cutting a small amount and wonder if anyone has attempted this. I searched the topic and mostly found information about lino stamps

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You will have to check the material data sheet for specific flooring tiles to see.

Most of it has chlorine in it and that is not suitable for a laser. That is why the posts strictly talk about true linoleum which is made from linseed oil with safe fillers.

Will a small amount damage? I wouldn’t do it. The chlorine makes nasty stuff and breaks down the parts of the machine. And that isn’t talking about the bio effects.

I would find colored chipboard and find a safe resin to coat it with and make my own.

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Another possibility is to use heat transfer vinyl (used for t-shirts and such). Most of that is urethane-based (although you should verify that on what you are considering) and is generally considered safe to cut in your laser. It comes in many colors and is available from your local large craft store.

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I would think that the photos of the one you want put on Mylar with an inkjet printer would do better and be closer to scale, unless you wanted exotic wood parquet

Even then you might find the Glowforge better for furniture than flooring.

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I’ve never thought about using mylar. I’ve actually never used mylar. Is it stiff so it would hold it’s shape even when cut small? I wanted to cut a carrera marble look vinyl into tiny octagons. Could I achieve this with mylar?

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This is a good thought. Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll look and see if they have patterns I like.

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Resin coated tile looks amazing but SO tedious. To make it look real, I would have to coat each piece with resin and lay it like a real tile floor. However, I might end up doing that anyway.

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Actually, what I would do is just score or engrave the tile pattern on either wood or artboard (this stuff works great) then cover the whole piece with resin. You could still grout between each tile if you engrave deep enough.

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Actually, I was thinking that you could do all the pieces in the program so that it could be printed as a single piece looking like all the pieces. You can find tons of stuff on the Web in seamless textures on the other hand both Gimp and Inkscape can do inkjet prints at least as easily as the SVG prints for the Glowforge… on top of that there is WoodWorkshop that is a graphic program originally designed for parquet mapping and wood siding , but there are hundreds of other ways to use it.

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Some cool options–that are safe–already noted. But also what about using marbled cardstock? Some styles can look a lot like carrera. You could always glue to to a thicker sheet of board before you do the cutting in the GF.

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Are you suggesting to engrave this artboard on the GF and then cover it with resin?

I’ve actually done this before but want a more realistic effect in my next project. It really does look quite good but I am trying to push myself toward more realism… in my dollhouse… lol

This program looks awesome and I can see many uses for it. Basically, if I’m understanding you suggestion, it’s basically to print something out that looks like tile and install it in one section?

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Yep! Although, resin might be a little thick for this application. You could easily spray it with a gloss acrylic spray instead.

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Yup, as you can get far more realism in the fine detail, There are places like when making a table that you would not scale the wood grain that in scale you might be able to put a finger in, but there is no need to force the problem trying to make confetti look like floor tile. Since you can print the small detail where even the grain of the wood is in proper scale and the curved edge and shadows are in place anything that in real life would be less than a half inch, would be almost impossible to recreate that way but work very well as an image.

I recall a fantastic job done of a fancy sports car , that they went through all that could not scale properly as an example the steel body would be like thin aluminum foil that could not be touched or it would be like a bad accident every time you did.

I had a few minutes to give this a try and it came out pretty good!

I whipped up a quickie design in Illustrator
(here it is if you want to give it a try TilePattern

then I engraved and cut it from Canson Watercolor Art Board (linked in my previous message). Then colored some of the tiles with alcohol markers. Sprayed it with acrylic sealer. I don’t have any gloss spray so I applied some colorless embossing powder. I think the little tiles look really authentic! You should give it a try.

Note: the design above is larger than I ended up doing it in the Glowforge. I shrank it down to fit the space I had on my material (a scrap).

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Wow that looks sharp!

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THIS LOOKS AMAZING!!! OMG!!! I CANNOT WAIT TO TRY THIS! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! Would you mind sending me the settings you used? I LOVE this!!!

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I really like the idea of clear embossing powder too because it gives it a nice texture, like handmade tiles would have. Thanks again! I cannot believe how good this looks!

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I would engrave chipboard squares, paint them, then brush a coat or two of Mod Podge. That should look pretty close to actual vinyl when they’re done.

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