Cutting first new designs...Problems!

I didn't want to waste the left over american cherry I had today, so I practiced on some scrap wood I picked up from home to see that the design clarity was good enough.

The first issue I had, was with the bow-tie design, there isn't much white space on it and so most of the wood is rastered away, it looks nice, but as you move it back and forth, you see that the edges are very spikey and bumpy, this is because bits are rastered away right to the edge of the design. To make this better I moved the 'cut-through' outline on the laser cutting program so it wasn't touching or going over the 'raster' design out-line of the bow-tie. After trying this it looked not as good because it had a clear cut-out outline to it which didn't look right... I then moved the 'cut-through' outline around even more so that it was overlapping at the top of the bow-tie, but then that there was a gap between the bottom bits, this then caused a shadow like effect that looked kind of natural, which was good.

The hand bag design also had some faults...I had made two 'cut-through' shapes, one for the outside of the handbag and one for the inside of the strap/handle which holds the bag. It looked nice enough when it was cut, however the strap was so thin where it had been cut either side, that it broke in a matter of seconds! Definitely not something you could sell, so I tried it with the middle bit 'un-cut' so there was plain wood grain in the middle of the design, between the strap, however this looks ugly and chunky! Am going to have to come up with a good Idea...

Today I also booked LOTS more time for the laser cutter and got some new 4.5mm thick american cherry cut, for all my new, exciting plans over the next few weeks! Expensive taste!