Engraving Software Recommendations Wanted

[paulried]

Can someone recommend a reasonably priced engraving package? I am not looking for anything really fancy. I would like to be able to scan some images or favorite pictures and engrave them on various materials with my router.

Cheers

[Rekd]

Wintopo has a freeware version of a Raster to Vector converter that should work nicely to create the vectors, then use your favorite cam package to engrave it.

'Rekd

[paulried]

Thanks. I will check it out. I guess you can't beat free!

[Rekd]

What would be nice is a $10.00 rebate for d/l'ing freeware!

'Rekd

[boxwood]

Try this it only does the text but is very handy for engraving and it is free too

http://www.deskam.com/deskengrave.html

[paulried]

I have deskengrave already. I am looking for something that processes images.

Why? A few years back I saw a really neat part that took white plexiglass and engraved a photo onto it. When it was backlite it looked like an old black and white photo. I am trying to reproduce this in a shadowbox

[hardmill]

Rebates w/ Freeware!!!

WOO HOO!!

[Laff Riot]

If you would like me to try and run an image of your choice through the programs I use for comparison purposes I will be happy to help.

For flat engraving I use photoshop, corel and paint. Corel is my standard as it makes everything easy and quick but paint 11 has some new vector features that really make designing engraving plates a snap. I vectorized a million dollar bill in about a days work with Corel.

For dimensional engraving like coins and jewelry I use Gravostyle.
It works off the shadows in the pic to set your depths.

I would be interested to see how the various packages stack up feature to feature on points like this. Send me whatever you want - provided its a clean pic.

[WOODKNACK]

How about DESKART ?

[HomeCNC]

Paulried, I think you saw the demo from ArtCam Pro. DelCam was passing this engraving around at shows.

[paulried]

That could be. We have ArtCam at work. However, I saw the part in Salt Lake City when I was visiting a company that at the time represented the scanning system we use. We have a ScanTech laser scanner on a 4 x 8 ft table for scanning customers parts to make molds. It creates HUGE STL files that we convert into G-code and make a new master on a router.

Anyway, the guy who owns the place did this on the side for fun. He built the shadow boxes and sold them at local fairs. You give him a photo and he machined it. Looked nice.

BTW, the scanner is cool. Check it out at Scantech

[rabbit]

Hi paulried
I just uploaged a program in the ftp unspecsified section that might be what you looking for.It is a free program that I found somewhere on the net. I forget where. It takes a bmp image and makes a gcode. hope this helps.
Dan