Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Laser cutter-y goodness!

I spent today working on the laser cutter area of the resource site, and after proofreading, uploaded it, tested it, and called it done (for the moment anyway). As I was listing future tutorials and tips that I wanted to add, I suddenly was struck by an idea.

You see, we've pretty much been limited to just using the cut and engrave settings for each material. We've been using two of the default 16 colors for settings. Black is engrave, red is cut. Well, I thought, why not create more complex designs in Illustrator using the 16 colors, which could then be cut or engraved with different powers and depths to acheive a more interesting effect on the material?

I spent the next two hours testing, playing, and taking notes. I used a simple design modified from one of the patterns supplied in Illustrator, enlarged it, changed the colors and lineweights, and came up with some interesting final cuts and engraves. The possibilities are endless! I am going to work on more complex patterns tonight or tomorrow morning, and really see what the different settings can do...

(yes, I am a geek!)

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