Create a silhouette for plasma cutting

[jlasater]

I plan on cutting two round disks that are shaped like the hands shown below but with say a 1/8" border. The disks will be solid, and only the outer edge needs to be shaped like the images.



Being very new to Inkscape, I'm not sure what the functions are called that I would use. I assume that I need to make the hands filled solid so they look like a silhouette. Fill doesn't work...it leaves a white border inside the hands. Using trace bitmap and setting the threshold to 0.995 sorta works, but leaves an artifact line around the outside edge, which I assume is because the original image does not have a hard edge.



I also need to scale them appropriately, but if I just resize them, the width of the thumb doesn't grow proportionately. The hands end up looking taller than they are wide. Some variation of drop shadow is almost what I'm looking for, but drop shadow does just that, creates a shadow, not something with a hard outline.

Can one of you guys give me a hint to what I need to be reading up on to do this? Just looking for hints to put me on the right path.

[jlasater]

I found the Pencil Tool and black fill accomplished what I needed as far as making the image solid black. Still seems like there should be a way to do this programmatically instead of by hand. Maybe no?

Now...how to enlarge the image proportionally to create a border in the metal that will be cut?

[adbuch]

I plan on cutting two round disks that are shaped like the hands shown below but with say a 1/8" border. The disks will be solid, and only the outer edge needs to be shaped like the images.

I don't understand exactly what you are after. You want round discs that are shaped like the hands that are solid, but with a border like the hands?? What does this mean? Is the outer perimeter round or shaped like the hands? If the part is solid, how is the "border" implemented? Maybe draw a sketch and take a picture so we can better understand what you want.

David

[adbuch]

[jlasater]

I'm sorry...I'm iterating what I'm looking for as I go which obviously makes it very confusing. Originally, I was going to do a simple vinyl cut of the two hands, unfilled, and then was going to cut two round circles out of metal and put the vinyl on them. Then I though "I have a plasma table...go fancy" and then decided to try to cut a silhouette of each hand out of metal to a size that would put about a 1/8" metal border past the vinyl hands. That's the plan I'm after at this point. I've been trying various features in Inkscape as I go and have figured out some things. Where I'm at right now is how to proportionally size the solid silhouettes I have so I can cut them out of metal. The upper left is a copy of one of the hands filled in solid and resized slightly. The upper-right is a mirrored hand placed over another mirrored silhouette. It doesn't look too bad, but it isn't proportional. You can see the outside part isn't proportional in size. Hopefully that makes more sense.



Sorry for the confusion...

[adbuch]

[adbuch]

I am working in Outline view. I have everything on single layer. Much too confusing to use multiple layers for this sort of thing.
David

[jlasater]

I had tried resizing like that and it gave me the results where parts didn't enlarge proportionally. Yes, the XY dimensions scaled evenly, but the drawing didn't look right. Overlaying the hand line drawing over the result shows the base of the thumb isn't proportionally larger, and other parts didn't scale evenly. It's hard for me to explain. The outer line on #2 does not have the same thickness all the way around...the tip of the thumb is thicker than down the sides, the bottom finger line isn't consistent in thickness.

[adbuch]

I had tried resizing like that and it gave me the results where parts didn't enlarge proportionally. Yes, the XY dimensions scaled evenly, but the drawing didn't look right. Overlaying the hand line drawing over the result shows the base of the thumb isn't proportionally larger, and other parts didn't scale evenly. It's hard for me to explain. The outer line on #2 does not have the same thickness all the way around...the tip of the thumb is thicker than down the sides, the bottom finger line isn't consistent in thickness.

Are you wanting to cut only a blank as you first said, or now as shown in the image I labeled #2?

David

Here is how to edit to get the blank hand.

[jlasater]

I think I found what I was looking for. Path > Inset and Path > Outset thicken lines effectively shrinking or growing an object, vs. just resizing the entire thing. When I used that, it fattened up the hand in an expanding direction and created the effect I needed.

[adbuch]

[adbuch]

Here is some information you may find useful.
David

http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/

Also Logos by Nick has a great Inkscape course at a very reasonable price.
https://logosbynick.com/inkscape/

Inkscape also has some built in tutorials.

[jlasater]

The resulting project:


Turned out just as I had hoped, other than I would have used a lighter color blue vinyl if it had been available. The backing plate is about 5 inches wide. I used small hard drive magnets to hold the hands on, plenty strong, but can still be moved. In hindsight, I shouldn't have deburred the front edge...the shiny from the wire wheel doesn't look good, imho.

[acourtjester]

Here is a similar one posted here year back, I cut 2.

[adbuch]

Here is a similar one posted here year back, I cut 2.
mail box hand (2).JPG

Nice work on both of them.
David

[acourtjester]

Ah shucks 2 Gif file.gif (3.48 MiB) Viewed 959 times

Ah shucks 2 Gif file.gif (3.48 MiB) Viewed 959 times