Mirror Image Engraving

[Paul Bahlin]

I wanted to cut out some figures with translucent acrylic and they were to have engraving on the interior of the shape. I also wanted both sides to look the same. That meant I needed to engrave both sides and the engraving had to match up (perfectly aligned). Here's a trick I came up with for repetitive results....

This is a bit long but simple once you get the concept.

I use inkscape to build a 'sheet' of product that contains multiple parts in a layer called original. I make a rectangular border around all the parts, leaving about 2mm clearance and color this magenta. Each part has a border that is blue and any interior cuts are done in red. The engraving is done in black.

Then I duplicate the entire sheet and move it to a new layer called mirror. On this layer I do a vertical flip so it's essentially upside down. this is the flip around a vertical mirror line.

Then I print the mirror layer with the original layer shut off.

On the laser I set my color options to only engrave (the black) and cut the magenta sheet border. At this point I have a sheet of engraving sitting inside of a close fitting rectangle.

Carefully remove the sheet while holding the rectangle in place. Then flip your sheet and put it back in the rectangle. The rectangle serves to perfectly align the sheet for the next step.

Now I go back to inkscape, shut off the mirror layer and open up the original layer. Print it to the laser.

On the laser I set magenta to not cut and I set the red and the blue to cut, black to engrave. Let it rip.

You will have cut out parts with mirror image engraving on both sides.

[Bob WrightNC]

As a newby, I appreciate your post. There's probably lots of ways to skin this cat but this looks like a good one. Thanks!