Laser cutting leather - how to generate patterns

#1

I’ve got a few ideas for things I’d like to make (and a few veg tanned goatskins) but am not sure the best/easiest way to make patterns. I’m looking to cut grooves for the thread to sit in and stitch holes - and ideally be able to modify stitch spacing etc easily and quickly if it’s a complex piece - so I can draw a curve and have the stitches added automatically rather than doing it manually. I’m sure there’s something that does this really nicely and elegantly but I don’t know what.

Ideas?

Cheers
Calum

#2

Dashed line in illustrator?

Half way down https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/stroke-object.html

#3

Don’t forget to be very sure that your leather is not dyed with hexavalent chromium dyes.

#4

Me neither but one thing is once the origin X Y is fixed you can take as long as you like to sort out the rest, and if you have the original as a reference, most CAD packages can offset lines, then maybe some manual erasing to get the dashed effect?

#5

@pip, That creates a visual dashed line, but not an actual dashed line in the path/spline. The laser cutter would still read it as one continuous line i think.

@Calum_Nicoll, you could try the above and then convert the stroke to outlines, however the cutter will be going back over itself on each line, so i’m not sure how neat it would be in the end result.

Laser Cutting Leather
#6

A dashed line works just fine. Remember, the interface is effectively a printer, so if it prints dashed, it cuts dashed.

#7

Hi Calum,

I’ve done this when making purses and wallets in inkscape creating dashes of holes along the path. You can do the same in illustrator. I have left a book in the library area: laser cutting fashion that gives you a step by step guide on how to do this and how to create a varierty of patterns.

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