engraving with mill

[RStuart]

I would like to take a hand drawing from paper and convert it to mastercam so I can machine it. It is only 2D. Any suggestions?

[Eric S.]

hello

 

Have you tried doing a search? I believe there have been some posts about this topic in the past.

 

Eric

 

[ 04-21-2003, 02:23 PM: Message edited by: Eric Salsman ]

[Bullines]

Scan it and run it through Rast2vec.

[Noel]

RStuart

I have imported bitmaps into mcam before.Basicaly if you can scan your picture and save it as a bitmap.Then go online and download a trial version of a raster to vector conversion program.which will after vectorizing allow you to save as dxf format.depending on the quality of the bitmap it can be a little choppy.Ive heard the mcam9 comes with a chook for r to v but i'm on mcam8 still so i'm not sure if thats the case.Hope this helps

Noel

[Bullines]

quote:

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Ive heard the mcam9 comes with a chook for r to v but i'm on mcam8 still so i'm not sure if thats the case

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Yes; File | Converters | Next Menu | Rast2vec

 

It's best to work with 2-colour images (Ex: black and white with no greyscale).

[RStuart]

What does it want when it asks for a rast2vec access code?

[Bullines]

For v8.x, Rast2vec runs for 30 days, after which you must purchase an access code to continue to use it.

[RStuart]

And I assume for version 9.1 it does not work at all without the access code.

[TeccBoxx]

I have been doing a lot of engraving at school. I have used rast2vec and it is pretty cool. However I must admit that there are better ways to do conversions and so on. I would get a copy of Corel Draw and use Corel Trace that comes with it and save it as a dxf file. Convert it into mastercam and tool path it.

 

You can download a 30 day demo of Corel Draw to try it out, however it is a very good program and I would purchase it if you are looking to do a lot of engraving and vector art.

[out2thow]

Adobe Streamline works best for me, extremely easy to use, then you can import it to Illustrator and clean it up by deleting anchor points.

 

My Fiancee is a graphic artist, so i have the access to these programs, you may not want to buy them just to engrave. You can edit it streamline but it's not as easy as illustrator.

 

out2thow