Hey Gang -
I guess I have to eat a few of my words and take back what I said. Here goes.
If you have been keeping up with my postings on the subject, I bought my Ink Express IE 300 mini laser engraver with the primary goal of cutting vector based files. I like gears, so the plan is to cut plastic gears using .PLT files.
My initial attempts to do this were less than successful and I wrongly assumed that it would not be possible to cut vectors properly from within their software.
Now, I will say that it would be easier and offer more control if one could cut directly from DOS using PLT files, but you can't and that is a sore point.
But, getting back to what you CAN do from within their software...
At first, I made a mistake. It appeared that the only image files it could accept were BMP and JPG. There is an image converter portion of their software. It will convert .PLT into BMP, but the results are not great. Not the way to go for precision.
But, I recently discovered that in the image import part of the software, it will import .PLT directly, without conversion. It is a little funny, because there is a dialogue box that says image.BMP even though you are looking at image.PLT on your screen. So, I wrongly assumed that it was doing a conversion. The fact is, that it is making a BMP, but that is only for viewing. So, even though it looks like a low-res pixelated (aliased) version of your vector file, it will actually cut as a vector.
But no so quick. You go to the output screen and click on "outline" (which is their vector mode) and then "output". At this point, it will only cut out part of your file. And thats all you get. The user is totally reliant on how their software interprets your .PLT
I knew my .PLT file was good, as I also have an HP compatible plotter and I could completely and accurately plot my .PLT files on the plotter. And when I open them in the laser engraver software, you can SEE the whole thing, but it wouldn't cut the whole thing. It would typically get hung up on the edges.
I spent DAYS working on this, but then realized that their software wasn't really trying to calculate some edges. Hard to explain, but for any single image, the software my fail to edge detect where the edge is close to (or falls on) the outer edge of the image.
So, in the case of a .PLT file, it was simple enough to introduce some bogus lines that were outside the area that I really wanted to cut. This worked, but not always.
I finally stumbled onto a solution where the bogus lines sort of defined the corners of an image larger than I was really trying to cut. And by doing short bogus lines, then when the software is scanning for edges, it finds the edges I want. Hard to explain, but it works! I am finally cutting gears, using their software. For what it's worth, it sometimes finds the bogus lines and cuts them too, but sometimes it doesn't find the bogus lines.
Yeah, a long and complicated tale. I had to tell ya that it CAN be done!
I hope the pics help!
The first represents a PLT that successfully plots on HP plotter.
The second shows a possible result of that PLT with engraver
The third represents a PLT file that successfully cuts out a gear with engraver!
It's those lines outside the cutting area that let the software see the edges of the image.
It really can be done! |