Laser Engraving with Inkscape

in this video lesson you're gonna be learning how to make some basic keychains using our laser cutting machine so the objective is to learn how to make a PDF file that will let you engrave using our laser cutting machine so here's an example of what you can make on the software Inkscape in order to set up an engraving file so to setup an engraving file open start find the software called Inkscape if you don't see it in the menu here in the search type inc it should be the first piece of software that you see so go ahead and open that up we need to set this file up to the right size so find the file menu click on document properties the document properties window will pop up we need to change display units to inches and the units here to inches as well make the width one make the height two and then close that window your canvas will be small now so let's make sure we're in the View menu default and then there should be a button here that looks like this if I click on that it will zoom in to the entire canvas okay so if you want to write text on your keychain find the text tool click on the text tool click on your canvas write the text that you want to write out now my text has some things that needs fixing so if yours does something like this click on the select tool then click on the Edit object colors tools right here okay on the right side you're gonna get this menu with fill stroke and stroke style okay my stroke paint looks like it's too much so I'm gonna turn that off and I'm gonna turn fill on so we don't want a stroke we just want to fill so turn that off make sure this is on with your text selected the selector arrow here will let you move it you can resize it by grabbing the corners if you click on it again you can actually rotate it by grabbing one of the corners and rotating if you want to change the style your font style go back to the tools box and click on that a for text and right here this down menu will give you tons of font options you want whatever you decide needs to fit within this rectangle and there will be a hole at top here so keep that in mind so if you want if you click on the circle tool here if you draw a little circle right here you'll know not to put anything there okay but we don't need this so we're gonna delete it if you want an image like a tiger or anything else like you see in the examples you need to do a Google search so whatever you're interested in if you type the name of whatever you're interested in and then go to image search you're gonna see a lot of colorful images these will not work okay so if we type in the name of whatever it is that we're interested in so if I type in the Philadelphia Eagles and then I type in logo black stencil okay this one would be perfect so something like this where it's all black would be perfect so let's look at another example if I type in Pokemon stencil I'm gonna get stencils that would look awesome on a keychain especially like the examples you see here okay so for example let's say I want this Pikachu right here okay so with the image that so once you find the image that you want to use you need to save it so on that image right click on it save image as make sure you put it somewhere you're gonna remember where you save it I'm just putting on the desktop for now the filename remember the file name click on save inside of your canvas on Inkscape go to file import click on import I remembered that I put it on the desktop and it was named Pokemon Pikachu something that's this guy right here so click on it click on open it's gonna ask some questions just click OK now your image is gonna be large and blurry just like what happened here so find this button this button right here right under help or extensions this will zoom to fit drawing okay this is not a good file but we're still going to use it because we're going to trace it using a tool here so with your picture selected open up the path menu and click on trace bitmap this menu will pop up right here we need to change scans to to remove the background so make sure this is all checked off and then click on update if you're update looks normal that's great click on the ok button and then close this window and what you'll see is if you move it if you click and drag you're gonna get a transparent vector of what you've what you did what you found ok the the cool thing about this is so I'm gonna click on the original and press Delete on the keyboard the cool thing about this is now we have a nice clean graphic double cut nicely I'm gonna go to the top right corner and I'm gonna click on I'm gonna hold down ctrl on my keyboard and I'm gonna resize it and then I'm gonna place it on my keychain and I want to make sure everything fits inside of there so this is why I showed you rotate because you might want to rotate your graphic I could change this text to say something like you got you go and then resize it to fit I'm gonna Center things because the corners will be rounded for safety reasons and there's gonna be a hole right here in the center so this keychain is almost done we just need to save it as the right file so we click all file make sure you do this step otherwise it's not gonna work so file save as and it needs to be changed the save as type needs to be changed to PDF so a Portable Document format so make sure that you open that up and click on portable document format you also need to make sure your file name says your name and what that thing is so pick a true keychain is mine and you click on make sure you know like you can put on a desktop or a library like in your pictures folder click on pictures click on save you're gonna get a Portable Document format resolution thing make that say 200 right here for resolution so we get a nice clean graphic then click OK and your file is set up and ready for engraving on the laser cutter all you need to do now is email me this file or send it to the Google classroom or whatever I'm asking to send it on

Channel: Cruzi's Classroom

Views: 28,356

Keywords: laser engraving, inkscape, laser engraving with inkscape, graphic design, how to laser engrave, how to create laser engraving

Id: Ccta9dvWGCE

Length: 9min 23sec (563 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 24 2019