loosing fine detail

[metalworxfabricators]

We are having problems with loosing fine line details. Everything looks good on the inkscape screen but when we take it to sheetcam and then to the plasma cutting table we consistently loose a large portion of the fine line details. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Best Regards,
Metalworx Fabricators

[Capstone]

Maybe this will solve your issue and you'll stop losing fine details in your cuts.

When using Inkscape, increase the line width to .063in as you're drawing. That's the approximate width of the actual cut on a well tuned plasma cutter using 45amp tips (not fine cut 30amp) on a Hypertherm PM45. You can change this setting on the Width Box in Stroke Style (Shift+Ctrl+F)
That way, WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) when you transfer your drawing over to Sheetcam. Make a few test drawings and test the results and adjust as needed.

Good Luck

[metalworxfabricators]

Maybe I should have been clearer in describing my situation. The issue occurs when we import a fiel into a Inkscape drawing. All the fine detail shows clearly. We tract bitmap and save the work as a dfx file to our desktop. From there we import the file into Sheetcam and all the fine detail lines disappear. If you cut the project you get what you saw on the Sheetcam screen. Not what you saw on the Inkscape screen.

What are we doing wrong? We don't do much freehand drawing.Do you use a stylus for freehand drawing or what. We thought we might be able to clean up the drawing or redefine these fine details while in Inkscape and solve the problem. All help is greatly appreciated.

Metalworx Fabricators
Waxahachie,Texas

[Capstone]

Depending on the picture, the bitmap trace by Inkscape will typically create a lot more lines with vectors than your machine will cleanly cut or you would ever want to use. The bitmap trace feature cannot replace actual image tracing, it merely gives a relatively experienced user the ability to shortcut very basic image copying steps where, in the case of 2D Plasma cutting, the image is already pretty close to cut ready, but just isn't in the correct format to manipulate or edit; i.e. a .JPG image.

Just as a review, Sheetcam is just software that translates drawings (either dxf or svg) into G-CODE that the MACH3 Software then uses to instruct your plasma table on making the proper cuts. Sheetcam does have some built in logic that can affect the drawing however when it makes that translation. For instance, If there's too much detail for your machine to cleanly cut, or if lines cross and there are unintended dropouts that mess up the image, Sheetcam should indicate when certain operations can't be completed, but ultimately, it doesn't remove lines, it just won't cut them for the reasons stated above.


So, are you asking the machine to do too much fine detail work or are the files that were traced by Inkscape just not cleaned up correctly before they were imported into Sheetcam? If it's the latter, then you are likely expecting too much from the Bitmap Trace feature and should consider buying/subscribing to a Software program called VectorMagic.

For a business or even an avid hobbyist, using Vector Magic is a really good way to go if you're constantly trying to cut custom imagery from people that bring you pictures of items to cut or you take pictures yourself that you want converted into graphic file types you can edit using Inkscape or Corel or other similar software. Ultimately, you'll have to decide which is better based on the time/money balance between learning how and the time then spent to manually fix drawings in Inkscape or spend the money to use a specific "tool" to fix your issue without much of a learning curve.


Really hope this helped you.

Phil

[islander261]

Hi

It is far better when using Inkscape for graphics and Sheetcam for CAM that you transfer the file in the SVG format. Both programs handle this format well (native to Inkscape) and you don't have to cope with all the issues of converting to a DXF format file. Converted images converted to DXF can be a real problem for me.

John