So, playing around with doing some more Coasters on the Merbau hardwood (decking).
As it’s Mother’s Day today, I decided I would give Mum something Australian & sturdy for when she has guests over for drinks. So, here is a set of 6 coasters each engraved with 1 of the 6 Australian Coins imagery.
Unfortunately on the 5c piece (bottom right) there is a line running down the centre from the top. This shouldn’t have been there but actually should have been at the far right of that coaster (as a guide line for cutting to size with the drop-saw). What caused it is that my air-assist hose must have got tangled on something & wouldn’t allow the laser head carriage to move further to the right. Luckily I noticed before it did too much more & hit the Laser Power off button.
All-in-all, I’m pretty satisfied with the results. Was 2 separate layers cut for each image. 1st layer @ 4mA @ 20mm/s. 2nd layer @ 10mA @ 20mm/s. This was to provide a little bit of gradient into the imagery.
Took about 1 hour 45 minutes all up to complete. In the photo, it might look a little dark around the cuts, but that’s water that is still drying from when I cleaned up all the soot with nail brush.
@I_Laser Royal Australian Mint, took their zoom images from their coins on this page: https://eshop.ramint.gov.au/2016-Uncirculated-Year-Set/310668.aspx & then I put into Adobe Illustrator & Live Traced them (3 colours). Removed the lightest colour, changed the other two colours to black (as separate groups) then I used my vertical rectangle vectoring method to create the engrave files.
@I_Laser Yeah got the rounded ridges on the bottom. Got the decking at Bunnings. ~$5/linear metre. Worked out $8.25 for a 1.8m length. Used about 600mm worth doing this set (so only $2.75 worth). But many hours of design/lasering (mostly due to the having to wait 10+ mins for the dialog windows to appear because my design was too complex).
Good job getting that to work thru the Corel platform, I tried quite a few converters to get .svg files to work, but never succeded. Now I’m going Smoothie, so I have to start over learning that. My modern software handicap is a pain, I still don’t get exactly how Github works, it’s file sharing system seems similar to Googles, but I don’t get it (Yet). Just need to spend time working with both.
Halfnormal is re-posting my M2Nano information in a more readable format, want to make sure yo don’t too.
Thanks for the help. I’ve always been a hardware guy, but that’s not even an option these days. I will catch up, and appreciate the help in the meantime.
@Scott_Marshall I couldnt get SVG to work with CorelDraw 12 that came with the k40. But with x5 it works fine. No issues with it.
I haven’t got around to looking at anything yet for the website (or emails) but will do so in the next few days. I will keep in mind that HalfNormal is posting your info & won’t redo it. Thanks for mentioning.
I’ve never been really an anything guy. More of a bit of this bit of that sort of fella. Although of late, my skills seems to be more in design than anything else (graphics, artwork, patterns for sewing, etc).
You sure do show a talent for the design, and sure work hard at it, You pump out so many projects, one would think you have a couple of people working for you.
I’d think you would be selling a ton of the phone cases and similar stuff by now. I have done some coasters, but used birch ply and did a deco-pour (epoxy) finish. The problem is it hides the depth. Yours look great, never heard of that wood before, must be an exclusively Australian variety? It looks like Oak grain with a Teak coloring, and oiliness. Merbau must be common there? I’ll be looking for some, but I’m sure I won’t find it at OUR lumberyard.
I often visualize what I want to happen, but can’t even draw a decent stick figure. Give me Autocad and I can render a device down to the last thread. I have a hard time stopping. I’ve just learned to adopt it as my style. I do custom T shirts (thinking of doing one for here) and just draw in the line art style. Sometimes it works, sometimes not.
I find you’re usually your own worst critic. What looks iffy to me often is very popular.
@Susan_Moroney Just random things for myself (e.g. pants/shorts/bags/cases/etc.). Although lately I’ve been having a go at eco-fabric planters (I have some listed on my etsy for sale). Never done any quilting as I rarely use a quilt (doesn’t get cold enough) & I have no idea how. One of my friend’s mother does a lot of quilting. That’s a great idea to make your own quilter’s templates. A guy I know suggested I make those sort of things when I first purchased my laser, but like a lot of things, I never got around to it.
@Scott_Marshall It’s funny you mention that, but I don’t sell anything mostly, although I would like to. I use to sell a lot of handmade stuff (tobacco pouches & wallets) but have had enough of spending hours on a piece to make $10 profit. Not worth all the effort I put into it. So I’ve just been playing around with different ideas to see what is cheap (materials), easy (effort) & efficient (time) to try find something that will work as a viable income product.
I didn’t think Merbau was an Australian wood, however a quick google gives me the origins. (http://www.woodsolutions.com.au/Wood-Species/merbau). According to that, it is a South-East Asian hardwood. You may have to look for it by different name too (Other Names: Kwila, Ipil, Vesi, Johnstone River Teak or Scrub Mahogany). Either way, it is a nice wood in my opinion, but I’d hazard a guess any nice hardwood would give you similar effect as these did.
I have all these amazing ideas for artwork/things I want to do & 90% of the time I am held up by my lack of skill. Give me a pen & paper, it will look horrible. Give me a mouse or touchpad & I can probably get it pretty spot-on lol. I used to do custom t-shirts, but my only customer was myself (& family). Made a heap for a fishing competition with our team logo on it & sponsor (family member owned a local fishing shop in the town of the competition). What method do you use for the t-shirts? I used vinyl heatpress, but always wanted to get a sublimation setup. Just lack of $ as always & a million other things I spend my spare $ on.
Unfortunately, I can create a million great things that look like people would buy it, but I have no idea how to sell it or get people to buy it hahaha. That’s a learning curve I’m working on at the moment.
Thanks for the link, to be honest was more interested in the process.
I’ve had a play with a few pieces of software but not found anything that works reasonably well for converting raster to vector. My background is prepress, so I can usually get something usable, or if that fails I end up redrawing it in corel (which is a PITA), the depth of detail you have there is impressive.
Agreed, it’s easy to find things the laser can do but making a dollar on them is a completely different story! So many things I’ve tried but the hourly rate is not worth it. The machines have paid for themselves though, so that’s a good start.
As for SVG’s I’ve found only SVG v1.0 works when importing into corel, everything else either errors or loses the plot when imported.
@I_Laser I’ve been saving in SVG 1.1 since I started using Corel x5. To be honest, I didn’t even pay attention when I was saving. No problems importing it at least.
I’m fairly sure I’ve seen an option in Corel Draw for Trace, but not certain if it does the same thing as Adobe Illustrator’s Live Trace. The AI Live Trace is a marvel to use. You can take any image & do a trace, usually with good results. Sometimes you get odd things happening, others you lose detail, but there are 11 different presets that you can use to trace the image, from High Fidelity Photo (which retains the most detail) through to Technical Drawing (which I have no idea what to use it on, but maybe on some kind of plans). I usually use either the 3, 6 or 16 colour choices for my laser tracings, then I remove or combine the colours until I’m satisfied with the amount of layers used (don’t want to be doing 16 layers of separate engrave powers/speeds most of the time). I think there are some limitations to what we can do, but I’m always interested in finding “loopholes” or “work-arounds” to do what I require.
