Topic: Design Ideas For Macbook Pro Laser Etching (Read 151 times)

gasclown · « **on:** October 23, 2007, 10:45:00 PM »

To have anything etched you will need to have it in layered, vector format. The printer/etcher will charge you to vectorise it. So, a much simpler design would be less costly. The design in the pic you showed uses ps 'brushes' that are very popular/common (to a very nice effect though IMO). That's good and bad - the good is that you could redraw it layered quite easily, the bad is that ps brushes aren't vector...

I have a feeling you are going to either take a massive learning curve or pay dearly for a design such as that. if you have a friend whose capable, it would definately pay to have them 'vectorise' your design before getting quotes for etching.

good luck

SICKdimension · « **Reply #1 on:** October 25, 2007, 11:24:00 AM »

http://www.flickr.co...tos/laser-etch/

SICKdimension · « **Reply #2 on:** October 28, 2007, 03:08:00 AM »

Yes, Illustrator is one of the inustry standards for creating vectors. Vectors are basically mathematical shapes, so they can be scaled to any size, versus bitmap, which are set pixels at one size.

I came across this the other day. Pretty interesting:
http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/

gasclown · « **Reply #3 on:** October 30, 2007, 07:13:00 AM »

Hey, yep. I can almost garantee that your file will neeed to be outputted through illustrator anyway. Throughout the course of the year I prepare a fair number of files for etchwork (glass or stainless signage mostly) and it always needs to be a vector AI file with curves (type converted to shapes). But the flicker gallery SICKdimension showed, had some stuff that looked raster to me... perhaps vector isn't a requisite for some jobs/machines.

You'll probably find, however, that they are simply run through 'Live Trace' in illustrator or another proprietry program. problem with that is that the created paths need so much work that you were better off drawing from scratch in the first place. IME, auto-vectorising can leave very fine lines that show up in the etchwork even though they appear solid in workfile, rounds get flattenned, angles get sharpenned etc.

Hope it helps, wouldn't want to see you crapping up yr mac

.

gasclown · « **Reply #4 on:** October 31, 2007, 06:35:00 PM »

You've inspired me

Getting the pic from the link in my sig, etched on mine (minus the text, all at one depth). Will post a pic here when its done.

atomiX · « **Reply #5 on:** November 03, 2007, 06:26:00 PM »

Ha, I wish it was that easy for me...

Author Topic: Design Ideas For Macbook Pro Laser Etching (Read 151 times)