Laser: Keychains

In this workshop you will learn how to:

• • create shapes in Inkscape

  • define shape parameters

  • prepare a file for the laser cutter

In the photo below, the text is etched and the rounded rectangle and key ring hole is vector cut.

From a participant of the first workshop.

Open Inkscape

Shortcut: Windows > Type "Inkscape"

Or look for the icon below:

Today we will use the following in the Toolbar

Creating the outline of the key chain

Click on the Square Icon. Click the left mouse button, and while holding down the mouse button, drag until you have a rectangle. Don't worry about dimensions, we'll fix those in a moment. Release the mouse button.

Now we can modify the rectangle's dimensions. In this example, we have given Width as 3.000" and Height as 1.500". We have also given the Ry as .2", which produces a nice rounded rectangle. Depending on the name length you may want to adjust these settings later.

Your key chain should be just under 2" x 2".

Setting the rectangle's object and stroke

We will change the outline for the key chain to red which defines the "cut" for the laser cutter. Cutting is referred to as vectoring. Later when we enter text, the stroke and fill will remain black, which signals to the laser cutter areas which are rastered, or etched.

With the rectangle selected, go to Object > Fill and Stroke

Stroke Paint > the second option is "Flat Color." Enter "ff0000ff" as the color. ff0000 is red, the last two Fs declare opacity (we want it completely opaque).

Stroke Style > Set Width to .003 inches.

Placing the name

Click on the Text Tool. Select a font. Select a size. Don't worry about size, as we'll reshape it later.

Click the Selection Tool. Doing so gives the text handles to re-size it. Let's make Madison large enough to almost fill the key chain. (Tip: If you hold down CTRL while resizing, you can maintain the proportions, meaning your letters won't distort becoming very thin or very wide.)

We can leave the fill and stroke of Madison as is. The laser will raster or etch it out. On clear acrylic, this will appear as frosted while the "white space" remains clear. If you are ready for an intermediate technique, we can change the fill and stroke so the letters are outlined, or we can manually arrange them.

Just like the key chain outline, the key ring hole is also a vector cut, meaning we want the laser cutter to cut all the way through. We will use the same parameters as we did for the key chain outline. Review them above. When you're ready, make sure the circle is selected by using the Selection Tool. Go to Object > Fill & Stroke (No fill, red stroke, as thin as possible).

You may temporarily save your file in My Documents. To carry the file to the laser cutter, you may save to a USB flash drive. You may want to upload the file to your personal cloud storage as backup.

Attached below is the file shown above.

Survey

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