James Coleman
Illustrator
Illustrator is a picture designing app. It lets you create and manipulate photos and pictures, but in this case we are going to use it to create an outline for a laser printer.
First open illustrator and create a new file.
Next just find a black and white image from the internet and bring it into illustrator this is what the laser printer is going to engrave.
Next create a red outline where you wand the laser to cut. This red line is the code for cutting and not engraving for the laser printer.
Now its time to put the laser to work! the next few steps will show how the laser works.
First your going to want to find your saved illustrator image and load it up. Than press file, print, once you set up the correct material thickness.
After pressing print open up the laser printing software and your illustrator design should be in the center of it.
Because the laser would cut the shape wrong where it is you will use these two buttons on the left to center it properly.
After the printer is all centered on your object than hit the big green button and watch the laser do some magic!
Once they laser is done printing you once an illustrator file should be something you can hold in real life. It should look a little something like this.
In order to put your Vinyl cut out on something what your going to have to do is first peel away the unneeded filled space in the letters. As example being the letter B take a pointy tool and scrape the holes out of the centers. Than grab a piece of transfer tape and put it over the vinyl. Than use a squidgy so flatten it to the letters and get rid of air pockets. Peel the transfer tape away and put it on the surface you want the decal to go. When applied use the squidgy again to secure the vinyl to the item. In this example i used my designer notebook and this is how it should turn out.
The biggest things I learned doing these two things have been the illustrator and vinyl transfer processes. The laser printer opened my eyes to the possibilities that machines can have and the vinyl really showed me something I have never seen before.