need info..-Resize Files

[billphillips]

I am just starting up, and was thinking of building a couple of garden arches, probably 30" wide maybe 36" high filling with 1/2 sized art to display, can designs be shrunk smaller from the original without too much loss of features. made up to fit two on a table . your input is appreciated

thanks bill in alberta canada

[abmagrum]

each file is different. I think as long as there isn't to fine of detail you can shrink it .

I half size a lot of things and they look good .

[OTHill]

I often resize files smaller or larger.Most files you can even resize only length wise or width wise a little bit.If the detail gets to small I often remove smaller details. You have to go by what the file looks like.If a small triangle for instance cuts out with little more than a pierce theres not much use having it there.My 2 cents worth

[billphillips]

Thank guy's for your replies, don't get my machine for another week or so
building these arches and cutting and finishing will sure help the learning process

bill in red deer

[Gamelord]

Because the images you are using are mostly vector images, you can resize them up and down without any quality loss. Meaning you can take an image that is 4 ft square and size it down to 1 ft square and it will still be the same image quality. Unlike a picture or bmp, jpg, tiff, ect.... that when you size it up or down it becomes pixilated or distorted.

As mentioned above, the only issue you will run into is when you take a larger file that has some fine detail and then shrink it down. The detail stays the same quality (as far as the drawing goes) but the distance between becomes smaller and smaller. Most plasma cutters have a kerf of around 1/16" for fine cut and around 1/8" for normal cutting. If you shrink an image down so that you have less than 1/8" between each cut, your plasma will burn through it and you will end up with a large mess or hole instead of the fine detail.

[billphillips]

Gamelord, , because this is for display, only to show what the machine can do possibly by just cutting the outline and reducing the # of very fine internal cuts would be sufficient, I could also possibly hand paint the fine detail as an example of what would be there in the larger version, I will keep you updates as it progress...wish me luck,

machine will not be here for about a week or so, then setup and learning...so it might be a little time.
Ordered steel-fx patinas and finishes yesterday, so hopefuly they arrive about the same time, looking forward to the challenge

bill in red deer

[Gamelord]

What I will do when cutting fine details is to set the order of the cuts so that say the left side cuts out, then the plasma goes to another area and cuts that, then comes back and cuts out the right side. This helps keep the heat in the plate down to a minimum and can help cut out some intricate cut areas. Another thing I will do when something looks really close and I am not sure if it will cut is to just cut a sample of that area on some scrap to see how it does. I will then instantly know if I need to enlarge the areas between the cuts or just bypass them and do something else.

I had a spiderman that I was cutting out that had this problem. The spiderweb on spidy's face was just to narrow and burned through on many areas. I had to go in and make the web thicker by about 1/32" on both sides and then it cut just fine.

Hope this helps.