Laser cut fun August 11 2011

How good is laser cutting! Laser cutting works by directing the output of a high-power laser, by computer, at the material to be cut. The material then burns away, leaving an edge with a high-quality surface finish. I have been playing around with this finishing technique for the cover of an annual report, and there are a couple of laser cutting tricks I’ve recently discovered…

1. With the supplier I am working with (Badger Makes Badges), you need to outline the objects you want to be laser cut, and set the stroke width to less than 0.17mm. If the stroke is 0.17mm or thicker, the machine won’t recognise it as an item to cut.

2. Laser cutting paper can leave burn residue on the flip side of your artwork. If you can get away with it, have it cut from the side where you have the most ink coverage, so that the burn is less noticeable. This might mean mirroring your artwork and cutting it from the reverse side.

3. Text will always be a bit fiddly to set up as a laser cut file, because of all of those darn ‘o’s, ‘p’s, ‘d’s, b’s, ‘q’s, ‘a’s, ‘g’s, ‘e’s and capital R’s (etc). The ones with the floaty bits in the middle. To avoid the potato-sack-stencil-look, try alternating which sides the branch come from and from which direction when you are linking your islands. Probably avoid laser cutting small text altogether if the printed product will be handled a lot.

I’ll post up a photo of the finished product when it is back from the laser cutter!