converting to vector

[george013]

I would like to cut an image in wood, relieve, negative or positive, or just out. It are black/white images, something like a profile.
Those woodcuttingmachines, I don't know the right word for it, only work on basis of a vectorial drawing. I downloaded 2 programs to convert a raster image to a vector image and played with it.
Is there somebody that has experience with this and could get me in the right direction?
George

[Shadowman]

Jigsaw.

[george013]

Jigsaw.

No, it's not a jigsaw. Fraise, milling cutter, rotary cultivator the dictionary says. The modern jigsaw works with laser.
Those machines are computer controlled and for that they need a vectorbased image.
George

[DrKimble]

I think you're looking at a ton of post work to get a photograph broken down to vectors for a wood working machine. If you're talking about the outline of an animal or something (or even a face) you can flatten down the images and then it might be quicker to just draw vectors yourself over the image, focusing on outlines and major details. If you're talking about trying to get a forest scene or something I can't imagine how much time that would take, even with some automated processes. If you have Photoshop or something similar try using filters to break images down into outlines, like those pencil or inkline ones, and then see about cleaning those up and converting to vectors.

[george013]

I think you're looking at a ton of post work to get a photograph broken down to vectors for a wood working machine. If you're talking about the outline of an animal or something (or even a face) you can flatten down the images and then it might be quicker to just draw vectors yourself over the image, focusing on outlines and major details. If you're talking about trying to get a forest scene or something I can't imagine how much time that would take, even with some automated processes. If you have Photoshop or something similar try using filters to break images down into outlines, like those pencil or inkline ones, and then see about cleaning those up and converting to vectors.

Thanks for your reaction.
I downloaded MagigTracer, 20 day trial, and RasterVectFree. I'm able to save a converted photo to an .eps or .dxf file. And I was able to open the .eps-file in TurboCad 6, which I purchased some years ago but never worked with it.
I just looked to InkScape. It looks that that is able to do the job too. I'll try that out later.


A half a year ago I visited the FabLab in Amsterdam. It's a world wide organization where you can use machinery that otherwise you never could. http://fablab.waag.org/machines. An interesting item is that it is situated in The Waag, an 15th century city gate. And where Rembrandt painted his Anatomy lesson of dr. Tulp. Probably on the same floor.

George

[loosecanon]

I use Corel Draw for turning into vector. Get the trial or Student edition. Once vectorised you can select individual parts of the image and so remove that not required.

[george013]

I use Corel Draw for turning into vector. Get the trial or Student edition. Once vectorised you can select individual parts of the image and so remove that not required.

Thanks. I watched a video tutorial. It looks good. Only the system requirements are windows 7 or 8. Maybe I've to ask my daughter, she just got a new laptop, windows 8.

George

[Inkanyezi]

I use Qcad for vector drawing, but it has a steep learning curve.

If you want to do many identical engravings, I can understand that it would be worth the while, but otherwise, I would just enlarge the image and paste it to the block of wood and cut manually. I have an older version of Autosketch, which runs on old Windows boxes and draws vectors; I'm not quite sure, but I think it can also save files for CAM machines. It is easy to use, so if you need it, I could perhaps send it. It's version 2.0 and it works even on Windows 3.10. The only catch I have found with it is that it will only accept or write DOS 8.3 filenames, as it was made before the 32 bit versions with long filenames.

[Manfred M]

Adobe Illustator also has this functionality. This is what I use when I need to convert images / line drawings into vector graphics.

[chauncey]

Urban brings up a valid point in that, is this a one-off project or a series of the same engravings.
Most milling type machines work off CAD programs which, with proper software, can convert jpeg images.
You might want to hook up with a local engineering school for some current direction in your venture.

What you want to do is really easy once you lock down the technique.

[george013]

Urban brings up a valid point in that, is this a one-off project or a series of the same engravings.
Most milling type machines work off CAD programs which, with proper software, can convert jpeg images.
You might want to hook up with a local engineering school for some current direction in your venture.

What you want to do is really easy once you lock down the technique.

I just want to learn what those machines are able to do for me. I have been looking on the website in the projects and found an example. http://fablab.waag.org/project/greyhound
My project will be a heron on a lamp post. After I vectorized the photo.

George

[chauncey]

Were it me, if this is a one-off scenario, I would contact a 3-D printing service.