cnc art work

[micheliron]

I have a Tracker plasma table and am looking for art software and designs, I already have the Red Pup discks but Im looking for more detail and better scenes, thanks.

[lowpull]

Dont know if the detail is as good as you want, but signtorch has a cd full of art for a reasonable price . www.signtorch.com

[Weldtutor]

Welcome to CNC Zone

Some of the links below might have what you are looking for.

http://home.earthlink.net/~dxf.graph...hicindexpp.htm
http://www.ezart.com/
http://technogon.com/vol1patternlibrary.htm
http://www.linearpro.com/shop/catalog/index.php
http://www.makairametal.com/artdisks.htm

[Jcar]

Weldtutor, Lowpull,

Have either of you purchased any of the disks from the links in your posts? If so, what do you think of the image quality (ie...smooth non-faceted lines, usable data formats, etc)?

[Weldtutor]

I can only speak for the EZ-Art which are good quality bitmap (silhouette) images.
They require conversion or tracing to be usable for CNC.

Perhaps other users can provide information for products from the other links above.

[lowpull]

My machine is not working yet. So I havent cut any of the images,But I did buy the signtorch cd and it comes in 7 different formats on the cd. I just blew up one of the images as far as coreldraw would let me and the lines were still clean at maximum magnification. If I remember it right it cost me 40 bucks.

[Jcar]

Thanks guys. I just ordered the disks from Signtorch. Lots of usable images at a decent price. Seemed like a pretty good deal.

[Bigtoy302]

Jcar, Have you used any of the signtorch graphics yet?

[Med-Pac]

Check out the "share your part files" post on this site. There are alot of great dxf files for cutting there.

Mike

[Normsthename]

I just blew up one of the images as far as coreldraw would let me and the lines were still clean at maximum magnification

If it is a Vector Image the lines will be smooth no matter what the magnification.

Andy

[Jcar]

Bigtoy302,

Yes, I have cut a number of items from the Signtorch disk. As far as I'm concerned, you won't find a better deal anywhere. The images are well done and the there's a lot too choose from. They're composed of polylines. When cut to scale, I don't see any faceting. If I increase the scale (ie... 4X), I notice some faceting, some of the time. It really depends on the shape. Of course, you'll see this problem with any vector art that's composed of polylines (which I think most are). The easy fix is to import the file into Autocad, increase the scale, use the pedit command to convert the polyline into a spline, and re-export the spline as a new dxf. Once in Sheetcam, you can increase or decrease the "detail reduction" values to get the segment size to your liking.

[Torchhead]

Best quality vector artwork has smooth (bezier) curves (three nodes per curve) and is made for the sign industry. Have a look at the clipart in the mega collections of www.vectorart.com. Thousands of images and you can buy by the piece (cheaper for a dozen or more) or the whole set. These are not traces from bitmaps and are not polylines. They were draw by artists using the native vector drawing tools in Adobe or Corel. They are in EPS and AI format so you have to have a drawing program that will import those formats (most CAD programs don't)

Doing decorative plasma art with a CAD program can be time consuming and frustrating.
If you want a solution that works better try CorelDraw 12 or higher (CorelDraw ver 12 boxed suite on the web is $49.95) and download a free demo of our DXFTools to allow Corel to export DXF format and maintain curves and arcs. Import into SheetCAM as DXF and setup cut process and post process with a plasma post.

We have been professionally cutting steel and aluminum (99% decorative) for 4 + years using the tools above + MACH as the control software. We developed most of our artwork ourselves over the years but find the clipart a great aid at times. Scenery is bits and pieces merged together. No matter how much clipart you own you customer always wants something different.

We have some free artwork on our CandCNCSupport Yahoo Group if you care to join. It's in CDR (CorelDraw vector) format so you can try out the DXFTool demo. Good artwork for CNC has:

1. Arc and curves.
2. Closed objects
3. NO overlapping objects or lines
4. Clean edges with minimum numbers of nodes.
5 Easy to edit and "weld" in text and other objects.

TOM CAUDLE
www.CandCNC.com