What is Illustrator?
Illustrator is a 2-D sketching program that focuses on vector images. That means the text or photograph is composed of lines and anchors rather than pixels. Which is what makes it work so well on the laser cutter.
First I created my design for my key chain on Illustrator making sure that I made the lines that I want to laser to cut all the way through to be red and an thickness of .0001.
Then I got the file ready to be accepted by the UPC software.
Here my project is shown on the UPC software which is pretty much a birds eye-view of the laser. You can also control the laser from this.
Here is my final Key chain.
Here the laser can also be used on a vinyl cutter. We are using the vinyl cutter to make vinyl stickers of our names.
Here is where we tell the vinyl cutter to cut.
- Peel back the unused vinyl at a 45 degree angle
- Be sure to remove letter fillers, like the holes in B or D
- Then transfer the sticker onto transfer tape by squeegeeing it on
- then pull of the vinyls backing
- then stick the sicker onto the notebook and squeegee it and pull of the backing at a 45 degree angle slowly, being sure no letters are being lifted up.
Here is my final Sticker.
Conclusion
I learned many helpful things from doing these two projects. First the vinyl cutter is pretty simple to operate but the steps to putting the sticker on are very important to follow. Finally the laser cutter, lining up the laser on your projects corners is very important.