Laser: Bookmark

Introduction

Today you will design a bookmark for the laser cutter using Inkscape and Google Image search.

Download the file

Jump down to the bottom of the page and Right-Click the download arrow for 2 by 6 (tall) or 6 by 2 (wide), selecting the Desktop as the save destination. When the file appears on the Desktop, Right-Click and select Inkscape.

The template work area is defined, and the unit of measurement is inches.

Notice the outline of the bookmark is red, and the book and the text are black. This is because our laser cutter recognizes up to 7 different colors for vector cuts. We use black and red in the lab because it is easy to tell the laser to raster the black shapes without rastering the red lines (an unnecessary waste of time).

Right-Click on the text and select Delete.

Find a Quote

We have a great selection of quotes on reading and libraries put together by the CPL Foundation in PDF format here: http://www.cplfoundation.org/site/DocServer/quotes.pdf?docID=221

Click the link and find a quote. To copy the text, click and hold as you drag the cursor across the selected text. You may have some trouble with this because of the formatting. Copy as much as you can and fill in the rest after it is Pasted. When most of it is highlighted, Right-Click and select Copy.

Go to Inkscape and select the Text Tool. Click near the work-area. You should see a blinking cursor. Go to Edit> Paste and the quote should appear. Correct the quote. Go to Text> Text and Font to select a font. The corner handles turn green when you mouse over them; if you click, hold, and drag you can resize, and if you hold down Shift, you can resize proportionally.

Find an Image

Do a Google Image Search for book. Click on Search Tools. We have additional options like Black and White, usage rights, and more. Searching by usage rights is a good way to find images which might by suitable for commercial use (though you'd still have to check with the creator). For today, just select Black and White.

Browse the images and when you find one you like, click the image, then View Image.

You'll then Right-Click and save the image to the Desktop.

Adding and Tracing the Image

Go back to Inkscape, select File> Import, and select the image from the Desktop.

Inkscape will ask if you want to Embed or Link. Select Embed.

Now go to Path> Trace Bitmap.

Reduce the scans to 2, check Remove background, click Update and OK, then click X to exit.

You'll have two copies of the image. If you double-click on them, the one that has all of the gray diamond-shapes (path nodes) is the vector--keep the vector! Delete the one that does not have path nodes.

Save, Preview and Make your Bookmark

Go to File> Save as and name your file. Keep the default format, SVG which means Scalable Vector Graphic.

If you wish to preview your print, open Retina Engrave by clicking the Windows Start button and typing Retina. As the program is loading, go to File> Print, and in the box scroll left and select Full Spectrum Print Driver. Go back to Retina Engrave to watch your file loaded. Take a look at the Raster Engrave and Vector Cut tabs to see what your design looks like.

This preview shows that the image and text appear in the Raster Engrave tab. As you can see in the Vector Cut tab, we have both black and red as we designed in Inkscape. On the right, we have the Control Panel. Looking under Vector Layers, you can see we are able to make sure we cut on the red lines and ignore the black lines. We are ignoring the black lines by changing Passes to 0. (Alternatively, we could use a high Speed and low Power setting to do a little vector engraving, but our design has a lot of lines very close together and this may not come out as expected!)

Melissa's ideal settings are shown:

Raster Power % 100

Raster Speed % 85

Vector Layers RED/outline Speed 80%, Power 80%, Passes 2

Survey

Surveys are here: https://sites.google.com/site/cplmakerlab/surveys