Easily Suede

For this assignment, I was tasked with rastering a small logo onto a leather keychain. Rastering is the process of engraving a design onto a material using a laser cutter. In this case, I was rastering a swimming logo onto my leather keychain. I chose this logo because I want to make something that represents me. Swimming is a huge part of my life. As a swimmer, I want to have this keychain to remind me of what I have accomplished. In order to make sure I properly rastered my keychain, I had to practice. First I vectored, cut out, the exact shape and dimensions of the keychain I was rastering out of cardboard. I rastered my logo onto this mock keychain. I vectored and rastered this mock keychain on a piece of cardboard where I was assigned a certain section of the cardboard to cut out my keychain. Then, once I had properly finished this mock keychain, I rastered my swimming logo design onto my real, leather keychain. I used the Charlotte Latin Fablab laser cutters in order to laser cut and engrave my design.

Designing My Keychain and Logo

The first step to rastering my leather keychain was practicing. I needed to practice rastering my swimming logo on a mock keychain made out of cardboard. In order to make a mock keychain that was the same size as the actual keychain, I had to design it using Inkscape. This keychain design would be laser cut. It was necessary that this design had the same dimensions as the leather one so that when I actually rastered my swimming logo onto the leather keychain, it would be to scale and in the right place. First, to make the logo design, I found the logo that I wanted. I dowloaded it and brought it in to Inkscape. This picture, as it was, would not be able to raster. I needed to create a bitmap, or a trace, of this image. This bitmap would be able to raster onto my keychain. I selected my logo picture and went to path, trace bitmap. I used single scan, brightness cutoff. I pressed apply and deleted the original picture. I was left with my logo design that could be rastered. In order to make my actual keychain design, I took a picture of my leather keychain and removed the background. This would make it much easier to create a bitmap of the keychain. I downloaded this new keychain without a background and brought it into Inkscape with my logo design. I selected the keychain and then path, trace bitmap. I used single scan but this time I selected edge detection. This would make a bitmap of the outside of the keychain, and what I wanted to vector or laser cut. I selected apply and deleted the picture of the keychain. I used calipers to find the dimensions of the leather keychain in order to make the keychain design the same size. I found that the width of the keychain was 2.3 inches and the length was 4.5 inches. I changed the dimensions of the keychain design to these measurements, and then I was finished with this design. 

Spacing My Keychain and Logo

After my design was done, I had to put it in the right spot on the page, where I would be cutting it out on the piece of cardboard. Adding another challenge, I had to cut out this practice keychain in a specific area on a piece of cardboard that I was assigned to. I needed to pay careful attention to keeping my keychain design inside this box. My keychain design was already the right dimensions, but my swimming logo was way too big. I simply moved my swimming logo design where I wanted and made it the size I wanted by dragging the sides. Once my keychain and logo were the right sizes, I combined the two by selecting both of the designs and object, group. This was one design now, my keychain that I would vector and the swimming logo that I would raster. I then measured the entire cardboard piece, which was 17.25 inches by 27 inches. I changed my page size to these dimensions. Now the entire page was the size of piece of cardboard I would be cutting on. Then, I measured the size of my assigned area which was 5 inches by 3 inches. I made a box in Inkscape with these dimensions. I measured the distance between my assigned area and the edges of the cardboard which was .5 inches away from the bottom and 4.5 away from the sides. I made the x and y coordinates of this box to these numbers. This would put the box in the right position on the page where it would be the right position on the cardboard. Lastly, I moved my keychain and logo design into this box, where I wanted it. The keychain was in the right position and this was where it would cut, correctly. I then deleted the helper box.

Laser Cutting and Engraving the Mock Keychain

My design was finished and in the right position. In order to laser cut, my design had to be in Corel Draw. I needed to save my Inkscape design as something that I could send into Corel Draw. However, some of the ways I could send my design would not properly go into Corel Draw. I had to save my keychain design and my swimming logo design separately. This way, they would each properly raster, in the logo's case, or vector, in the keychain's case. I first copied the logo and deleted it, leaving only the keychain. I saved this as Karlin Vector. Then I pasted the logo back in and deleted the keychain. I saved this as Karlin Raster. I saved both of these designs as plain SVGs. This was the only way I could properly send these designs into Corel Draw. I then opened Corel Draw and opened my two different designs on a page, with the right dimensions of 27 by 17.25 inches. I made sure to change the line thickness of just my keychain design, not my logo, to hairline so that it would properly cut. I saved this Corel document and Karlin Combined. I sent this to Enj Proj. To laser cut this practice keychain on cardboard, I went to the computer that was connected to the medium laser cutter. I opened my design that was saved in Enj Proj and downloaded it. I opened it in Corel Draw on this computer. Since I had saved it from Corel Draw, all of the dimensions of the page, keychain, logo, and all of the spacing was correct. I went to file print and then to document properties. I changed the page size, changed the settings to the combined settings, changed the raster and vector settings to the ones for cardboard that are posted on the laser cutter. I selected done, apply and then print. I started the job on the laser cutter and my design cut and rastered perfectly. It came really close to the edge, but I stayed inside all of the boundaries.

Rastering My Leather Keychain

After my cardboard keychain was cut out, there was a space left, with the exact dimensions of my leather keychain. I simply placed my leather keychain in the space my practice cut had left, and it fit perfectly. I went to the computer that I had just added my keychain and logo design to, and I simply deleted the keychain part of the design, leaving only the swimming logo in the right spot. I selected file, print and changed the settings to only raster, since I only needed to raster this design onto my keychain. I changed the raster settings to the ones posted for leather on the laser cutter. I selected done, apply, and then print. I then started the job on the laser cutter and watched as the laser cutter rastered my swimming logo onto the leather keychain.

Problems Faced While Making My Keychain

One significant problem I faced while making my practice keychain was sending my Inkscape design to Corel Draw. For some reason, whenever I sent it, it would stretch out my design to the point where I didn't even know that it was a keychain design! In order to fix this problem, I broke up my keychain design into what I would raster and what I would vector when laser cutting. I selected object, ungroup which split up my design into the keychain and swimming logo. I copied the logo and then deleted it. I then saved the keychain design and Karlin Vector, because this is what I would vector when laser cutting, as a plain SVG. I then pasted my logo back onto the page and deleted the keychain design. I saved this as Karlin Raster, because this is what I would raster when laser cutting, as a plain SVG. Both needed to be saved as plain SVGs because Corel Draw could not recognize the Inkscape SVG I was trying to import earlier. By simply changing what I was importing from Inkscape to something that could be recognized by Corel Draw, I was able to cut a nice, clean, not stretched, keychain.