How to prepare logo file for Laser Engraving
In this post, I'm gonna show you how to prepare a file to engrave in Laser machine.
Well, why I decided to write this post. A few days ago one of my visitors emailed me and asked for help. He has a problem with importing his Adobe Illustrator file into LaserCut. Well, I recommend him to resave Illustrator file to oldest version or export it to PLT file format.
Here is the deal to import your files into Lasercut or into any other Laser management software it will be better to export your files into PLT or DXF file format first. Adobe Illustrator has a very poor list of supported file formats to export. It will be better to use some other software like CorelDraw or Inkscape to export into PLT.
Visitor answered me that he resave AI file to version 3 and import it into Lasercut. But besides of problem that after a resaving logo that he wants to engrave deformed and in same time Lasercut starts to show error like the file has overlap. He also sends me his logo And here I want to show what was the problem and how to solve them.
Here is the logo. In the white background, it looks normal. But let's move it to the side and here you'll see that it has a white border.
If I'll ungroup file then you'll see that beside of counter it has another copy under this white background. If I'll check letters then you'll see that it has separated counter. As you can see some objects placed on each other and that's why LaserCut says that objects overlapped.
Now Let's clean object and make it usable.
To do that I need to delete all unnecessary part and substruct white border from word butchers to make space between words, as this white borders inherit for that.
Now it gets better. Next, I'm gonna select all object and unite them. Now this logo ready to engrave.
If I'll change view then you'll see that there is no any object that covering each other.
I'm gonna save this AI file in version 8. As I said It is hard to import this file into Laser management files. To resave it you can use CorelDraw or Free software that call Inkscape.
Or you can use Uniconverter that will allow you convert your file to different file formats.
Download it from official website
After installation opens it. It will open a small dialog box. Choose your file and choose a file format that you want to convert. After convert will finish new file will be created in the same folder.
After that, you can import it into LaserCut or any other software and engrave it.
