Determine When Raster, Vector, or Both is Right for a Laser Job

With a CO₂ laser, you can use a vector job instead of a raster job for items with a lot of small lines, like the tick marks on measuring devices. As shown above, I made a cast acrylic, half-scale carpenter square that includes a lot of tick marks.

Running a raster job with thin lines works well if all the lines are horizontal. Thin vertical lines, however, can be a problem. Depending on the line width of the drawing and the resolution of the print job, they may not even show up at all using a raster job.

Running thin lines as vector hairlines assures you that a mark will be made regardless of the lines’ orientation. It’s just a matter of drawing with hairlines and making your settings so that the lines are marked and do not cut all the way through.

For the carpenter square, I use color mapping to define the engraved hairlines and separate them from the hairlines used to cut the ruler’s shape.

The carpenter square can be done as an all raster job (except for the cutting) or an all vector job. It turns out that a combination of a raster job for the numbers and contact information and vector jobs for the tick marks and cutting the shape gives the best results.