So, I've seen a few posts and threads asking about using a laser cutter to speed up the pepakura process. I decided it would behoove us if someone took the reigns and took a stab at it. Thanks to the TechShop for supplying me with Adobe Illustrator and a nice Epilog Laser, and the guys there who I did this with.
The process is easy if you are familiar with lasers and Illustrator, but needs some care taken.
You have two options when doing this, either doing it to just the pep lines, or doing it to the pep lines with a texture applied. There aren't many files out there that have the textures included, but I decided to take this route since it was the harder one, and this is more of a proof of concept process. Technically, you don't even need to worry about printing out the lines, since the method I will demonstrate will laser cut and etch all of the lines, but I wanted to print them and the textures also, to show that it is possible, if not perfect.
Requirements to do this:
The most recent copy of Pepakura Designer, paid version.
Adobe Illustrator or some other good Vector editing program.
1) Export the PDO into a multi-file DXF : File -> Export -> Vector Format -> Multi Files DXF
2) Export the PDO into a multi-file BMP (optional if you don't need the textures) : File -> Export -> Multi Files Bitmap
3) Now in Adobe Illustrator, import one of the vector files, I don't know if it's important, but I used 1:1 Millimeter scaling.
4) Once the file is loaded, resize the Artboard to 8.5x11 inches (if you're using letter paper) And make sure it resizes centered. My illustrator defaults to upper left resizing which is bad.
5) The following are optional steps for applying the texture, most files don't have a texture, so they can bypass this step 5:
5a) Drag the corresponding BMP texture onto the canvas
5b) Put the texture into its own layer, and drop it to the bottom of the stack so all of the vectors are on top.
5c) Resize the texture to 7.32 inches wide, with proportions bound (so it resizes the height too) This step is important. When Pepakura exports files, it doesn't include the margin that it sticks on when it prints the piece out, which is 15mm on each side. The 7.32 is 8.5 inches - 30mm. You will see that at this size, the texture will lay under the vector lines a lot more close in size.
5d) Selecting the texture, center it on the page, I am lazy and just use the arrow keys and eyeball this, it won't be very accurate, because you are limited by pixels, it had better not be a big deal, because you SHOULD eventually be hiding the texture anyways with bondo.
6) On the vector lines, make sure they are all scaled to 0.01mm thickness. This is the size that Epilog laser cutters consider a "vector" cut, otherwise it will try and just etch the paper and you will get bad results, you want it to cut through on the cut lines.
7) Make sure the cut lines and fold lines are two (or three) seperate colors. I do gray for the cut lines, and red and blue for the fold lines since this is what Pep sometimes defaults to. If it doesn't color the vectors in output, you have to do this in Illustrator.
8) In one of your vector files, add an 8.5x11 box to it, and give it its own color. This will be explained later. It should be in its own layer.
9) Save everything!
10) Optional step: If you want, you should print this vector file, if you want printed lines or textures. Printing from Pep is a bad idea because you want to be 100% sure that the printed piece matches the cut lines as specified by your new vector file.
11) Now, hide all of the layers except the 8.5x11 box. Run this through the laser cutter on a piece of cardboard. This will help you line up your paper with the cutting area the laser cutter will be using. You can either etch the cardboard and lay the paper on it, or cut it out and drop paper into the 8.5x11 hole you cut in the cardboard. If you are not ink printing lines or textures, you can ignore this step, so long as you adjust the origin on the laser cutter correctly. It's more to make sure the cut lines match up with the printed lines as closely as possible.
12) Make the cut and fold lines visible and hide the box. In the laser cutter's setting, set the colors to their appropriate powers and frequencies. I did low power (like 10%), 50% speed, and about 500hz for the gray (cut) lines, and lowest power (1) 60% speed, and 20-40hz for the fold lines. Depending on your cardstock, lowest power will either etch it, or cut through it. The incredibly low frequency and high speed will ensure that if it DOES cut the paper, it will only perforate it, which is still useable for folding.
13) Run the cut job!
You can see from my pictures that it went awesomely. It was able to get interior cuts perfectly. My paper was a tiny bit off in placement on the line I cut in the cardboard, but it only threw off one piece a tiny bit. If I hadn't used textures it would have looked perfect. My cardstock was cut through, so I have tiny perforations for fold lines, they're far enough apart that it won't rip, and it does make folding easier.
I was able to effectively cut and score two sheets of pep in 6 minutes. It only takes a minute or two to set up the vector lines in Illustrator. The only real time sink is exporting and sizing the texture into the vector file. If you left this out yoou are looking at about 5 minutes of preparation, scoring, and cutting time for each sheet of pepakura, of which 3 of that you can spend eating or reading next to the cutter (Don't eave a cutter alone!)
Hope you guys like this. It's light on images now because my friend was taking some of the pictures. I will upload more when I get his SD card.
Laying the cardboard:
Pulling the pieces off the paper. Actually they were just loose, but in the future I should do something to anchor them to the cardboard. There is a strong blower in the Epilog lasers, and the two little roundish pieces flew off while it was cutting.
A back view of a cut piece, so you can see the scorching that happens, (though I had none on the front) and also see how the laser cutter perforrated on the score lines. You can also see that super sharp "L" shaped cut it did on the right side:
The one badly cut piece, it is only an issue if the texture is super important to you. I don't care so it's fine with me. Note, the actual cut lines are correct, the texture is just offset a bit, so there is a chunk of it on the leftover paper, it's an optical illusion that looks like just the perforation lines are off. I actually printed the page and cut the pieces out by hand, and laid them on top of each other too, and they are perfectly sized.
The process is easy if you are familiar with lasers and Illustrator, but needs some care taken.
You have two options when doing this, either doing it to just the pep lines, or doing it to the pep lines with a texture applied. There aren't many files out there that have the textures included, but I decided to take this route since it was the harder one, and this is more of a proof of concept process. Technically, you don't even need to worry about printing out the lines, since the method I will demonstrate will laser cut and etch all of the lines, but I wanted to print them and the textures also, to show that it is possible, if not perfect.
Requirements to do this:
The most recent copy of Pepakura Designer, paid version.
Adobe Illustrator or some other good Vector editing program.
1) Export the PDO into a multi-file DXF : File -> Export -> Vector Format -> Multi Files DXF
2) Export the PDO into a multi-file BMP (optional if you don't need the textures) : File -> Export -> Multi Files Bitmap
3) Now in Adobe Illustrator, import one of the vector files, I don't know if it's important, but I used 1:1 Millimeter scaling.
4) Once the file is loaded, resize the Artboard to 8.5x11 inches (if you're using letter paper) And make sure it resizes centered. My illustrator defaults to upper left resizing which is bad.
5) The following are optional steps for applying the texture, most files don't have a texture, so they can bypass this step 5:
5a) Drag the corresponding BMP texture onto the canvas
5b) Put the texture into its own layer, and drop it to the bottom of the stack so all of the vectors are on top.
5c) Resize the texture to 7.32 inches wide, with proportions bound (so it resizes the height too) This step is important. When Pepakura exports files, it doesn't include the margin that it sticks on when it prints the piece out, which is 15mm on each side. The 7.32 is 8.5 inches - 30mm. You will see that at this size, the texture will lay under the vector lines a lot more close in size.
5d) Selecting the texture, center it on the page, I am lazy and just use the arrow keys and eyeball this, it won't be very accurate, because you are limited by pixels, it had better not be a big deal, because you SHOULD eventually be hiding the texture anyways with bondo.
6) On the vector lines, make sure they are all scaled to 0.01mm thickness. This is the size that Epilog laser cutters consider a "vector" cut, otherwise it will try and just etch the paper and you will get bad results, you want it to cut through on the cut lines.
7) Make sure the cut lines and fold lines are two (or three) seperate colors. I do gray for the cut lines, and red and blue for the fold lines since this is what Pep sometimes defaults to. If it doesn't color the vectors in output, you have to do this in Illustrator.
8) In one of your vector files, add an 8.5x11 box to it, and give it its own color. This will be explained later. It should be in its own layer.
9) Save everything!
10) Optional step: If you want, you should print this vector file, if you want printed lines or textures. Printing from Pep is a bad idea because you want to be 100% sure that the printed piece matches the cut lines as specified by your new vector file.
11) Now, hide all of the layers except the 8.5x11 box. Run this through the laser cutter on a piece of cardboard. This will help you line up your paper with the cutting area the laser cutter will be using. You can either etch the cardboard and lay the paper on it, or cut it out and drop paper into the 8.5x11 hole you cut in the cardboard. If you are not ink printing lines or textures, you can ignore this step, so long as you adjust the origin on the laser cutter correctly. It's more to make sure the cut lines match up with the printed lines as closely as possible.
12) Make the cut and fold lines visible and hide the box. In the laser cutter's setting, set the colors to their appropriate powers and frequencies. I did low power (like 10%), 50% speed, and about 500hz for the gray (cut) lines, and lowest power (1) 60% speed, and 20-40hz for the fold lines. Depending on your cardstock, lowest power will either etch it, or cut through it. The incredibly low frequency and high speed will ensure that if it DOES cut the paper, it will only perforate it, which is still useable for folding.
13) Run the cut job!
You can see from my pictures that it went awesomely. It was able to get interior cuts perfectly. My paper was a tiny bit off in placement on the line I cut in the cardboard, but it only threw off one piece a tiny bit. If I hadn't used textures it would have looked perfect. My cardstock was cut through, so I have tiny perforations for fold lines, they're far enough apart that it won't rip, and it does make folding easier.
I was able to effectively cut and score two sheets of pep in 6 minutes. It only takes a minute or two to set up the vector lines in Illustrator. The only real time sink is exporting and sizing the texture into the vector file. If you left this out yoou are looking at about 5 minutes of preparation, scoring, and cutting time for each sheet of pepakura, of which 3 of that you can spend eating or reading next to the cutter (Don't eave a cutter alone!)
Hope you guys like this. It's light on images now because my friend was taking some of the pictures. I will upload more when I get his SD card.
Laying the cardboard:
Pulling the pieces off the paper. Actually they were just loose, but in the future I should do something to anchor them to the cardboard. There is a strong blower in the Epilog lasers, and the two little roundish pieces flew off while it was cutting.
A back view of a cut piece, so you can see the scorching that happens, (though I had none on the front) and also see how the laser cutter perforrated on the score lines. You can also see that super sharp "L" shaped cut it did on the right side:
The one badly cut piece, it is only an issue if the texture is super important to you. I don't care so it's fine with me. Note, the actual cut lines are correct, the texture is just offset a bit, so there is a chunk of it on the leftover paper, it's an optical illusion that looks like just the perforation lines are off. I actually printed the page and cut the pieces out by hand, and laid them on top of each other too, and they are perfectly sized.
