I made a double-sided bottle opener to start creating examples for custom designs. These could be advertising, family barbecue handouts, wedding party gifts. I can also envision these as items purchased by a bar or restaurant with employee’s names engraved in one side and the business logo on the other. The main reason I made them double-sided was to reduced the number of product I would “waste” experimenting.
One of the easiest ways I’ve found to start a project like this is to take a picture of the item and use that picture as a base layer. After uploading it XCS, I size it appropriately and mark the layer to IGNORE.
The attached XCS file has two layers of guides. A green layer with just the outline of the bottle opener, and a yellow layer with the engraving area. I lined them up using the photo from Step 1.
I created the green layer as a a template used to CUT three holes in a piece of thin wood. Once you have the template cut out, set this layer to IGNORE.
The yellow layer, also set to Ignore, shows the two main design areas and a solid circle representing one of the holes in the opener.
Do not use these layers for anything else. Put everything to be engraved on other layers. It’ll save you headaches.
At this point, you can close the eye next to your base layer if you find it distracting.
I added this photo in its own Layer. I chose the Comic 1 setting in Bitmap image, adjusted Sharpness and Greyscale until I was happy. I then Edited the image, using the wand to erase a lot of the white areas as leaving them will slow the process. The machine has to account for every pixel and it tries to laser nothing.
Resize in the design area (yellow layer) & adjust as needed.
Our logo is an .svg file, so I dropped it right in and positioned it.
Since this was a test piece, I wasn’t too concerned about what text I added, so went with my email and phone number. The phone number on the curve around the circular opening is hard to see and didn’t come out to my satisfaction. Would not recommend, but it is possible.
All text used the same settings.