I took a sheet of card, marked the midline and a line about 14cm down.

I then positioned a coathanger using the midline at the top and the inside edges of the coat hanger  touching the line.  This effectively gave me 3 reference points. I traced around the coathanger.

I placed the guide on the laser bed, ensuring it was square with the machine. I used clips to keep it it place.

Next I placed the coat hanger on the guide, within the traced image and fine tuning with the 3 reference points.  This set up enabled me to do several coat hangers without redoing the positioning.

I set the focus in the normal way and then moved on to mark the area.

I tried a rectangle first but it did not give me enough accuracy,  I then tried using a polygon to trace around the coat hanger.  This worked well.

I then inserted my design, adjusting the size and positioning it within the marked area.  This meant that to do the next one I only had to change the design. Some designs needed a second pass but as the hanger was still in place it was easy to do.

The biggest hurdle to begin was the placement of the coat hanger.

I initially scanned the coat hanger then loaded the image into xcs. I then traced it to produce a vector image but I had to take care not to change the size of the image. This pathway was not successful as it was too difficult to place it in the marked area accurately.

I solved the positioning issue by drawing a rectangle on an A4 sheet of card. The rectangle was 300 by approximately 140.  The coat hanger was then traced onto the card. This allowed me to place the coat hanger square with the bed.

Using the polygon tool to mark the area gave me a clearer idea of the coat hanger's placement. Adding the design directly onto the marked area gave better accuracy.