Metal Art Beginner

[SamkSmith]

Hello everyone! I would like to start out by saying that I am a digital artist. My dad has started a metal art bussiness. He doesn't do the cuts by hand, but with a machine that cuts it from the computer. I helped him out some today and I actually really loved seeing how it worked. My dad says he needs help finding and making more designs for the machine to cut. Since I am a digital artist, I would love to lend a hand and make some designs myself. There are a few celebrities I would like to make metal cuts out of with it, as well as charcters from video games I think would look cool. Only thing I am confused about is how do you make the design for the computer to cut properly? I do know that everything has to be connected so it will all stay together, anything that is outlined will be cut out to make a hole which forms the design. I want to make sure I paint out the design correctly on my art tablet so that the computer knows what to tell the machine to do in order to cut it out the way I envision it. Any advice? Thank you and God bless you all.

P.S. I do know that there is file converting involved. I am new to things like this so any video tutorials on file converting (which my dad knows how to do) will be very useful.

[yeomansjon]

Hey Sam, welcome to the forum. I'm sure there are many answers to your questions on this forum, but likely scattered in many different places. This is an interesting one for me because I am currently working with 2-3 artists to generate art for myself as well and I have to explain to them exactly what you are looking for. Probably the fastest way to learn is to look at the art files on here to see how art appears in a metal form so you can translate in your head how your art will look when finished (or how you want it to look).

There's a certain amount of technical aptitude required to use a CNC machine, and there's obviously a lot of artistic talent required to create original art. Some people are lucky to have both abilities (i'm not one of them). So this is where communication between the artist and machine user is critical. For me to use my machine, I have figured out that while cutting between 14ga and 11ga sheet metal, I have a .060" wide kerf (the width of a single cut) and I need roughly .100" of metal width to hold together. In other words, after a cut the metal becomes too flimsy or burns off the metal if the design has a metal portion width less than .100". SO, I say this because that dictates how much detail you can fit into your design. The .060" kerf and .100" width requirement are the same whether I cut a piece of art that's 6 inches wide, or 3 feet wide! Therefore you can fit much more detail into a larger piece than you can on a smaller piece.

Start by creating a piece of art exactly as you normally would with no regard to metal cutting. When it's done, then you can look at it to figure out how you can break it all up into positive and negative space (metal vs. no metal OR Black vs. White). If there is too much detail to capture with one layer, you can always use multiple layers to hold pieces together. I.E. a back plate that will hold cutouts (or dropouts) back where they belong or inside holes (regular circles or irregular shapes). Once you determine if it can all fit as 1 piece/layer of metal, then re-draw it in all black and all white to get your positive and negative space. All positive space must be connected (and in my case, there must NOT be any positive space that's less than .100" wide). If you have multiple layers, you need to draw each layer separately in the same way with positive and negative space.

You say you are a Digital Artist so I'm sure you have some preferred software you use. That's a whole different (and much discussed here) topic but many ways to skin that cat. Ultimately you'll want to end up with some solid vector art file that can then be traced and exported as a dxf file so your father can run it in his machine (depending on what he uses).

That's enough for one reply, I'm sure other's will have more. Keep us posted on your progress or show us a piece of art for advice on how to make it 'Cut-Ready'

[Gamelord]

Sign up to be a member here and you will have access to thousands of files to play with. As for creating files yourself, being a graphic artist you should have very little problem doing so. Most files used for CNC plasma cutting will be a Vector file usually saved as a .DXF file. A .DXF file (Drawing Interchange Format, or Drawing Exchange Format) is an Autodesk AutoCad file. Many programs such as Inkscape (free use), CorelDraw and Adobe Illustrator can create DXF files. Once you create a DXF you can then usually import that file into your plasma cutting software to create your toolpaths and/or G-Code and Cut.

What software are you using and what file types does your cutting software require? What is your cutting software?

Having that info will help us get you going in the right direction.

Welcome to the forum!
Hope this helps.

[little blue choo]

Welcome samksmith. As Gamelord said you should join the site, it will be the best $20 you have ever spent. It will give you and your dad access to thousands of cut ready files that he can cut right away or you can use them as a learning tool to see how the plasma world works. With your background as a graphic artist I'm use we can learn a lot form you also. What software will you be using for your drawings?

Rick

[Old Iron]

Welcome to the site.
There's a lot of folks on here with an enormous amount of talent for you to tap into.