Bit of a favour please, your magic on engraving !?

[totts]

Very early and good morning to all!

Was wondering if one of you kind lot could work your magic on a picture, my mate would like an engraving of a picture. And was wondering if anyone one could turn the outline of this picture into lines obviously dxf, any of my programs produce gobidy gooop :s i dont mind getting roughly the shape and i tidy it up, any help would be apreciated,

Oh the picture




Thanks, simon

[Musht]

Bit of a low res image , that`s grey scale rather than B/W

Attached rough looking dxf from 5 mins playing:

through Photoscape to turn it B/W. http://www.photoscape.org (sure inkscape could do this bit)

Into Inkscape to trace the Bitmap, path>trace bitmap http://inkscape.org

Exported from Inkscape with Big Blue Saw`s better , better, better DXF exporter

http://www.bigbluesaw.com/saw/big-blue-saw-blog/general-updates/big-blue-saws-dxf-export-for-inkscape.html

Could engrave it with F-engrave ; http://home.comcast.net/~sskroch/Fengrave/fengrave.html (http://home.comcast.net/%7Esskroch/Fengrave/fengrave.html)

Total bill for basket of high performance software , zero :-)

Cheers
Adam

Edit DXF removed at request of OP

[totts]

Hi, yeh i thought it was a bit pixelated ooo i will take a look at them when i get home, my phone wont read them, thank you, will dowload some programs and post my results :)

[totts]

Got all the programs now, so ive got the image, then path trace bitmap, then i dunno how to save it? Iv downloaded that blue saw and can save as dxf but it dont save anytging, but how do you export it? Cheers simon

[Musht]

Far from an expert in Inkscape, but to trace bmp, make sure its selected, then hit the trace function, use edge detection and hit update, preview window should show thumbnail of outline, accept it.

On main window ,slide the bmp which is underneath the outline to the side, delete it, left with a vector outline.

Save as and use Big Blue Saw DXF output , not cutting plotter DXF.

Cheers
Adam

[totts]

Ahh yeh i had a try at that but it was saving a dxf but was corrupt, will have to try it on my other computer. Thanks again i can see it makes easy work :) cheers, simob

[Scorch]

@totts, I gave your image a shot.

I converted the image to a pbm file using convert
"convert file.jpg file.pbm" (I performed this in Linux)

Then I converted to DXF using potrace
"potrace -a .8 -u 10000 -b dxf file.pbm" (I performed this in Linux, there is a windows executable version of potrace)

Some of the detail was lost in my carving because I made it so small (4 inches tall) and my scrap wood was not flat.

I used F-Engrave to create the v-carve tool paths. The F-Engrave computations took a very long time (~30 minutes) for this complex DXF file. If you go this route I recommend you try F-Engrave out on something less detailed first to get the feel. (One pitfall: If you don't save the g-code then change a setting you will have to recompute the tool paths)

You will need also need F-Engrave version 0.5 (which is available yet) to read the potrace DXF output file (attached). Expect to see version 0.5 on the F-Engrave web page by this coming Sunday.

(Sorry to jump in on your discussion, I used this image as part of some program debugging I was doing. It turned out pretty nice so I thought I would share it.)

[EDIT removed DXF file and picture]

Scorch

[totts]

Hi scorch, thats fine thanks for giving it ago :) i was well chuffed how that looks. I will have to give f engrage ago i had a play with it back along, will have to download the new one when it comes out. Thankyou , simon