I am attempting to cut foam inserts for a tool box and have run into an issue with the software duplicating the width of a ball point pen line. Multiple passes across the line rather than following the line. I traced several tools on white paper then scanned and converted the image to a .SVG in Inkscape. Now I am tracing the image using the Bezier tool to get thinner lines for the tool path. What is the magic line width to produce a single pass cut?
Tracing draws each shaded area as an SVG path. Each path has an outline, including adjoining ones. Going to be better to redraw in CAD a proper CNC safe file - where you have full control over where closed entities exist
In inkscape, I bet if you remove the "fill" after you did a "Trace Bitmap" on your drawing you will find your ink line is two parallel lines. If so, delete one. If you can not see anything after removing the fill, the make sure you have the "stroke paint" selected. These are circled in the picture: You can then change the "stroke type" and make it thinner. I use 0.05mm. I personally find it easier to take a drawing and import it into Fusion 360 as a canvas and trace with lines and splines. It is quick and easy and you end up with a nice clean .dxf file. That is how I did this project (and many others). May The 4th Charcuterie Tray
Hello Craig, What version of inkscape are you using there. I myself am still working with 0.92 although I know there are newer versions. I just stuck with the old one. When I open symbols I get to see an empty screen with the option to click on the arrow in the top right corner and there are some other things I can choose from, but none of them show me what I see with you. Thank you in advance for your reply. Yours sincerely Bert
Thank you Craig, That information will be helpful. I made a test file with line varying line widths and found for my laser that anything under .15mm creates a path vice something Lightburn wants to try to fill. I found the Control Point Spline in fusion to be much more user friendly than the Fit Point but getting good images to work from is essential. First try I was too close to my subject and the distortion caused scaling issues, good thing cardboard is abundant to do test burns on.
I will check when I get home. What I find helpful, is to take a measurement -- I usually use the over all length-- then take a picture from further away on a clean background. I then draw a rectangle the length of the measurement and insert the closely cropped tool picture into this rectangle. fusion will scale it to that length to fit into your rectangle. Then I will start tracing. After scaling, the original rectangle can be deleted.
If it is something flat like a wrench, I like to trace it on 1/4" graph paper. Then it is easy to scale.
Hello Craig, Thank you very much for your response. I think I'll have to switch to the newer version over time as well. I was always taught never change a winning team but that rule no longer always applies I think now. To trace images that must have a certain size, I use "raster" in the document properties. You can set this to 1mm per block in my case and if you give the color red every 5mm it is very easy to scale the image very precisely. Bert
