So am making signs with one single work like gather or blessed. I am used to a cricut machine with design software and am needing help with what program to design in.
This is the kind of thing im wanting to cut out. I just dont understand the jump from design to g code.
I took a snip of the image, converted to .svg, upladed to makercam.com to make the cut path exported as g code. But surely there is a better way to do this and well as a way to make it not as pixlated. Sorry if there is already a post like this, i am trying to read them all.
You need to try to export from your design software to svg in order to get it to come out how you want it. If you can maintain it as an svg it should import “well” into makercam. However, makercam isn’t perfect and sometimes fancy fonts will come in all messed up… for whatever reason…
I would probably use a program like Inkscape to draw your designs. Inkskape’s native format is .svg, so it’s a natural for this. If you have an image of the shape you want to make, import that picture into a new document, then add a new layer and use the Bezier curve tool to trace the shape from your image. The Bezier curve tool may take a little getting used to, but once you get the difference between clicking and click-dragging, it does a really good job. Delete the layer with your original image and save the svg file. Then use MakerCAM to convert to gcode.
I just copy pasted it into inkscape, and used the “trace bitmap” and got this. With a bit of clearing up you’ll have a nice svg that makercam can recieve that gcode can be made from. If you don’t spend thousands of dollars on nice all in one software you’ll have to make due with some online tools and a less efficient workflow.
To design something from scratch i’m really beginning to like Fusion.
PS This is also my first cnc machine, i’ve had it installed for a few weeks now. You’ll get the hang of it in no time. If you have any questions, just post them here, if you don’t mind getting too many answers
If you have a bad image to start with (.jpg) you can use photoshop or free Gimp and repeat blur and sharpen until the image is clean. Then export as .png as this format is scalable lossless. From there you should get a nice trace in inkscape.
