[JasonCcnc]

I have a homemade cnc router. I use it to do little jobs around the house and make small items for my friends.

I am trying to make a piece of wall art, and want to use a jpeg file that I found on google image. I have done this in the past, and have all kinds of trouble converting it to a dxf outline, to use in my vectric cutting program. I have photoshop, illustrator, solidworks, and vectric 2d and 3d.

What I do now is convert it to bitmap in Photoshop, then do an outline trace in illustrator, then export to .dxf, then write the cam program in vectric. This doesn't always produce a great image either.

I can get pretty good images if I take the jpeg into solidworks, and then manually trace out the image, but it take forever.

Does anyone have any tips on an easier way to do this that will produce better images.

thanks,

[lumberjack_jeff]

This thread on the Mechmate site is a good discussion of vcarving halftone images.

MechMate CNC Router Forum

[joesz]

There are several raster to vector conversion programs out there that work pretty good. There is always going to be some manual clean up but the bulk of it will come out OK. The original image needs to be clear and the lines need to be sharp or you will end up with a mess but it is still way faster than tracing the whole thing by hand. Just type in raster to vector programs in Google there are some free ones and there are some that will let you do a free trial.

[ridefst]

I've had good luck using www.vectormagic.com to convert bitmap to vector (EPS)
It's a pay service, but think they still offer a free conversion or two when you register.
Much better results than CorelTrace or similar - I use it to vectorize logos for lasering most often.