The Work in Process: Vectorizing Drawings for Laser Cutters

The Tested office and shop hosts artist Jen Schachter, who's in town from Baltimore to collaborate with Adam on an upcoming secret project. For this project, Jen will be using the laser cutter, vectorizing images using Adobe Illustrator. Jen walks us through her process to give some tips as she begins prototyping!

Shot by Ryan Kiser and edited by Norman Chan

Tested is:

Thanks for watching!

[S-K.]

As an amateur graphic designer with some experience in Illustrator, I never really thought about color coding to make the vectorizing process more clear. Really enjoyed the video!

[JARface]

I love vector tracing in Illustrator. It's so satisfying to get it just right

[xXFIREWIREXx]

Why would you trace around the circular parts by hand when you could use the circle tool and make it perfect?

[martygraxoxo]

This is probably a very good guide for somebody that's well versed in illustrator - and it definitely highlights the volume of things I do not know how to do in illustrator - but, if you (like me) are looking for a very simple, basic guide for "How to turn illustrator vector drawing into laser cut", maybe go to another video. The rest of the owl material.

[DesignsbyCADPRO]

This girl is pretty amazing.... where is the cutting going to take place?

[wolftoecamelpack]

*Me reading the title:* Hmmm... Yes. I know some of these words.

[Wiggityowned]

Anyone else think that her mic was part of her personality at first?

[JacobCanote]

@jen I noticed that when you were using the Pathfinder that you created additional paths to subtract with. Some of these followed the shape of the layer below. Was there a reason or benefit to using ad hop paths instead of leveraging the shape of the layer form below?

Here's a hint: instead of processing similar objects individually, try creating a composite path (command-8) with the paths selected. Now all the paths are 'grouped' as a single composite. This lets you use the pathfinder to apply the complex shape in a single step.

[Adumb_]

Illustrator and Laser cutters are 2 things I use daily... never thought about combining them.

[pandinfilippo]

Fantastic video! Love the graphic process!

[thejohnandpeter]

This is the type of videos I can watch all day, thanks Tested, quite intriguing though is that, in Illustrator, you can do multiple artboards in a single doc, why choose splitting them in various docs?

[WickedGuardian]

Yeah I think this is my favorite YouTube channel.

[Frostfly]

I spend a lot of time doing a similar process for both laser cutting and for the graphic design work i do. A great tool that anyone can use for this is Inkscape, an opensource vector program. I've used it for a decade and it's a great tool if you don't want a piece of software and not just a licence to borrow software from a big corporation.

[KalanYore]

It is the same process approach to color pressing or color film medium layers that would separate each image color and/or black, grey, white tones layering to recreate the entire image...any overlays atop of images to solid or various densities/ opaque backgrounds would work from dark to light...
So, it makes sense for the laser cutting burning away the many layers for a 2D effect or individual parts for making a 3D object assembly?
A challenge would be to create a pixeling effect to create a 2D image but can be done but is more work and time to do it as the laser burn pits would be uniformed or if there are different laser burning head-points changing the laser beam widths that could be used to create various circumference burns or cuts?

[JimmyGunawanX]

Got some works made in Blender to be physically printed as 3D or laser cutter for more 2.5 D one. Thanks for this project example.

[mitchellsack]

where can i get wood like this? with the backing so no burn marks

[jbrondos]

Wow. The tracing and node manipulation is impressive! I wish I could learn how to do that. Also, is there a good web resource for finding blueprints like this?

[SG]

This is something I've done for fun for fifteen years... Didn't realize people get paid for it.

[thombarclay]

Now I really, really want my Glowforge to come! Although I doubt my Illustrator skills will ever be a match.

[freyjasvansdottir]

Not Art Nouveau, but definitely Art Deco! Art Nouveau is all about nature, soft shapes, definitely no geometric shapes, whereas Art Deco is all about geometry.