I am brand new to all of this. The entire reason for buying the maslow cnc is to cut out christmas decorations. I want to find the images and then somehow transfer that image into an outline of the entire character and then the internal lines that will be drawn out by the cnc with a marker. I will need to create a tool path for each. My thoughts are to desaturate the image and then handle the internal lines. I am currently experimenting with inkspace but I am not getting good crisp lines for the internal portion (i.e face, nose, mouth etc.) After getting a good image from there, I will load into makercam and create the individual tool paths. I figured the marker will be first and then the cutout. Here is an image of a mickey that I made with a jigsaw and hand painted. This took two days to cut out and hand paint. (Note: the internal lines are basically an outline of the features so that I can make the cutout a paint by numbers and just paint inside the outlines)
Here is a file that I am trying to convert now.
Tomorrow I will plug that into my vcarve pro and try and get a single outline tool path for you.
I ran your image through GIMP to turn it into a bitmap, then put the bitmap into Inkscape to trace it using the “Trace Bitmap” command under the “Path” menu. Removing unnecessary scans I was able to get this SVG:
I put that SVG into JSCut and performed an Engrave operation on it.
I think that should get you all the internal lines you need to do a paint by color. This is actually something that I plan to do as well, as I have a Grinch that I made by hand a couple years back and I want to use the Maslow to make his dog Max.
Looking more closely at the JSCut simulation, there are still some double lines. If you increase the bit size, I think you can eliminate them, though.
That is amazing. I’m going to try those out and see what I come up with. I eventually want to do all the characters and I’ll upload
Mickey Waving outline SVG.zip (4.5 KB)
Here is the outline vector for the waving Mickey. You can fill him in how you want. This is the outside cut. If it stays to scale. it made it 22 inches by 22 inches. You can scale to suit.
So if you want the interior lines I can add them back. They will be ungrouped. When you load in to makercam, you can select the interior lines and only do a .05 cut to make a score on the wood. This you could use as a guide to paint. Then select the outside line and cut through. I can make the Gcode for you, but I think you want to figure it out on your own…true?
You can do a google image search and go to advanced search. Change the settings to black and white and line drawing.
Thanks! That’s one of the images I have saved and am considering. I really do like the advanced search options. You used to be able to specify the type of file too, but I haven’t used it in a while and am not sure it’s still an option. It was a great way to search for svg files.
I dinked around with Inkscape’s tracing some time ago. Unless it’s greatly improved expect to do a lot of editing afterwards to get a file that doesn’t have a lot of short vectors. All the Z up and down movement would be a Maslow killer.
Be careful about posting copyrighted images. Nobody’s likely to go after you (although they could…) if you make a one off for personal use, but when you start talking about sharing them or making cncable versions available for download you could start running into problems. IANAL and don’t want to be
I definitely have been wondering about how to create these and share them without them being considered copyright infringement. I have seen a lot of people make them without any problems, but there is no place that you can buy them.
How do you break up two lines that are touching. I selected a line for a tool path for the outline to be cut by the router. However, I need to break the line because the tool path leads into the cut out. I want the internal lines to be separated for the marker tool path.
you can do that in Inkscape. Use the “edit path by nodes” command (also F2) and then choose one of the break path options along the top tool bar. You may need to add a node to break it where you want, or you can reposition nodes after the break.
I plan to have the pen draw the whole image including the outline, then I plan to cut the outline with a separate operation. I figure that way I can still do the outline manually if I need to for some reason.
Disney has a reputation of being particularly aggressive about such things.
I have had pretty good luck just adding “svg” to my google image searches and then you wouldn’t have to do any file conversion at all.
A lot of these aren’t what you are looking for, but some of them look pretty good:
I found the file type filter in Google search again 
You can find it in the advanced image search page here:
https://www.google.com/advanced_image_search
I’ve been working on max. I am trying to learn to draw these images out with inkscape. Here is the file that I created using bezier curves around all the outlines. The inside lines are set so that they can be drawn with a marker. I have the gcode created to test, however I don’t have the marker set up yet. That will be done in the next week or so. The zip file includes the svg file with the 2 layers, the svg file as one layer, and the gcode that I created on easel for the marker and .25 router bit. Do not use this file if you are not using the marker because the plunge rate is aggressive for a router bit.
Max.zip (162.8 KB) I am attaching the Grinch files as well. Grinch.zip (374.4 KB)