Trouble cutting after converting from .eps to .dxf file

[CarlF250]

Hello, please bear with me while I try to explain my problem. I am trying to cut out a company logo that I found online. The logo was originally a .eps (encapsulated post script) file.

I open that file up in CorelDrawX3, save it as a .dxf, then open it up in AutoCAD for editing. In AutoCAD, the drawing is there, but all of the lines are splines. I then save and open it up in AP100 (Amada's laser software for generating NC code). It takes longer than usual to open the file in AP100.

Then once I make the NC code and send it to the laser, it will cut, but the feed-rate is very slow and it creates a lot of small ridges on the edge of the cut instead of a smooth edge.

I'm not sure if I should be doing something else with the file before or after I save it as a .dxf. Soemthing tells me that the problem is the spline. It should be lines or polylines. Has anyone else had a similar problem? Any suggestions? Thank You,
Carl

 

[IRstuff]

EPS can have lots of variations internally. Was the original EPS a bitmap? That would cause a lot of short splines to be created.

What you probably need to do is to manually create long curves in AutoCAD that duplicate the curvatures of the lines in the original EPS.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[CarlF250]

I downloaded the .eps from

http://www.brandsoftheworld.com

. I don't think it was a .bmp. Thanks for the tip. I know I can do it manually, I just thought that there might be a faster way.

 

[IRstuff]

You can readily tell by opening up the EPS file in something like Wordpad.

I looked at the "After the Hype" logo EPS file, and there's a combination of bitmaps and Postscript code. However, the Postscript codes appear to be very fine grained, and not very efficient. I don't remember a whole lot about Postscript, but there should be more efficient drawing commands in Postscript that would make such a file much smaller.

That particular EPS file is over 200 kB long, and while it's not a bitmap, it's not an elegant curve drawing routine either.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[IRstuff]

Given that there are vertex lists in the EPS code, you might get some enterprising student to fit the data to a few splines and reduce the coordinate count.

What's killing your curring routine are all the individual coordinates that are being specified by the EPS file. Each coordinate forces the machine to go to a particular point, settle, and then move on. Very time intensive.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[CarlF250]

Thanks for the info. I thought I would just be able to convert to dxf and cut it.

 

[IRstuff]

Might have been possible, you were just unlucky with those EPS files

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[aws04]

We cut this sort of stuff all the time, software called signlab is very simular to corel but you have more abilty
to convert to curves,polylines, polyarcs etc & the reduce the number points or nodes prior or during export.
Bystronic software Bypart has smoothing fuction that converts a series of lines or arcs into longer sections
depending on the amount deviation you set from the original path. Sigma nest & Primecut also do the same thing. I am suprised AP100 does not have this.
How short are the line segements? We try to keep our arcs & lines no shorter than about 3mm on flowing curves and 0.1mm
on tight segments. We can manage 0.01 segments with reduced but okay speed but the machine path is more prone to do something strange. If you don't want to buy software to do this work with a local sign shop they are sometimes good at converting bmp & eps etc - it may take a bit of sorting until they understand what you require.

Steve