From the course: Laser Cutting: Design for Fabrication

Unlock the full course today

Join today to access over 22,400 courses taught by industry experts or purchase this course individually.

Core terminology

Core terminology

From the course: Laser Cutting: Design for Fabrication

Start my 1-month free trial

Core terminology

- [Instructor] There are a few industry standard terms everyone needs to know before getting started with laser cutting. The first two terms draw a distinction between the two different types of design data that the laser can use, raster and vector. Raster is a media type you may have heard when using design programs like Photoshop and Illustrator. Raster media is comprised of small squares or pixels. Think about photo images with a maximum amount of pixels. You can scale raster up to size, but can't increase resolution. Starting with the best quality resolution you can will improve your engraving results. There is no enhance button. Vector files on the other hand, like SVG, EPS, and DXF, are easily scalable because the graphics represented are stored as mathematical lines or paths. Projects can include both raster and vector data. They don't have to be in separate files. The laser can fire at different power levels to control how much material is being removed. Cutting, as you can…

Contents