I think I'm getting the hang of this.....

[mauriceman]

Here's something I did on some 3mm birch plywood, 8"X10". It was stained and had 2 brush coats of polyurethane before lasering. Top spray coat was added after cleaning up with alcohol. Takes about 2 hours with a 2W laser full power, running at 450mm with T2Laser. I've done a lot of inkjet printing and letterpress work using designs from the metal type era circa early 1900s. This is spilling over into my laser engraving. My workflow starts in Photoshop and migrates into Inkscape with the Eggbot Hatch plugin. Most of what I do is for people in recovery and those in senior care facilities, hence this theme. I've included a zip of the SVG file if anyone is interested.

[HaniC]

Looks great. Nice use of the eggbot plug-in. Must save quite a bit of time comped to a raster and the finish is nicer.

[HaniC]

What's the reason for the coating before the engraving?

[mauriceman]

I've found the polyurethane reduces the staining of the wood and any that does occur, wipes off with alcohol. Using the cross hatching also diminishes the staining. Some of my stuff with solid fills still requires using transfer tape covering (aka wide masking tape). It seems to burn through the wood and heat the glue, vaporizing and re-depositing on the wood. Impossible to remove. I haven't tried shellac yet (woodworker, I'm not). Looking at experimenting with the amber Zinsser shellac on plywood.

[Zax]

That's impressive, very nice job!

The polyurethane before engraving really helps with clean up, otherwise you need to sand it to remove the residue.

[QuietMike]

what is the Eggbot plug-in?

[HaniC]

what is the Eggbot plug-in?

Eggbot plug-in is an inkscape extension that enable you to create hatched fills as seen in the text of above picture. Rather than doing a raster on text to fill them in, you make a series of vector lines to achieve the effect. The plugin allow you to create these from within inkscape. See:

http://wiki.evilmadscientist.com/Hatch_fill

and

https://github.com/evil-mad/EggBot/releases/

[nottingham82]

how long did you let the polyurethane cure before engraving?

[QuietMike]

Eggbot plug-in is an inkscape extension that enable you to create hatched fills as seen in the text of above picture. Rather than doing a raster on text to fill them in, you make a series of vector lines to achieve the effect. The plugin allow you to create these from within inkscape. See:

http://wiki.evilmadscientist.com/Hatch_fill

and

https://github.com/evil-mad/EggBot/releases/

oh i see, that's cool, I'm going to try that

you'll have to make a how to, because i can't quite figure out how to use it, i have like a circle, and i go to Path Effects, and add Hatches, but it shows a sloppy wavy (like an A/C wave) line that goes up and down a couple times in my circle, and then there's a whole bunch of numbers that i can adjust, but they don't seem to do anything

[mauriceman]

Search the forum for Eggbot. I've talked about it several times showing some of the settings I use. Reading about the concept of the Eggbot is very interesting. The evilmadscientist has several tutorials on how to use the Inkscape addons he wrote. Look for the Eggbot v2.8, it has a much better interface for hatch fills and the Hershey text has many new fonts. Here's a screen grab of the hatch menu for doing the criss-cross pattern I used. Play with the numbers for different effects.

[mauriceman]

Regarding the polyurethane....I'm no wood worker or finisher. I just followed the Minwax instructions along with reading on the internet. I buy 12"X12" precut pieces of 3mm birch plywood off ebay. I apply the first coat 1 day and wait 2 or more days before sanding smooth. Then the second coat and a couple of days wait again before engraving. I usually do up 6 or so panels at a time, some natural some stained. Best to use a prestain on this stuff if you do stain. I'm learning all this as I go along. Lots of mistakes are to be expected, that's how we learn.

[nottingham82]

Regarding the polyurethane....I'm no wood worker or finisher. I just followed the Minwax instructions along with reading on the internet. I buy 12"X12" precut pieces of 3mm birch plywood off ebay. I apply the first coat 1 day and wait 2 or more days before sanding smooth. Then the second coat and a couple of days wait again before engraving. I usually do up 6 or so panels at a time, some natural some stained. Best to use a prestain on this stuff if you do stain. I'm learning all this as I go along. Lots of mistakes are to be expected, that's how we learn.

And why we share!

[QuietMike]

Got the eggbot extension to work, very cool,
Is there a way to have it automatically fill everything at once?, I was selecting the paths manually

[Hippie With A Cowboy Hat]

Agree, have been spraying before I laser, and char wipes right off, then one last thin coat over the lasered part.

Nice work !

[mauriceman]

You have to select the paths to fill or it might do strange things. Try grouping all your "to be filled" paths before running the hatch fill. That way they're treated as a single entity. I use the group/ungroup a lot. I went back to Inkscape .91 until the developers resolve the "sizing" issues between versions. There's lots of internet chatter regarding the .92 release among artists that use Inkscape for much more intricate designs than I do. Kind of a wait and see, I guess.