Trouble with image trace and double boundary line

[nelsonmay]

I have messed with a lot of settings here and am not getting the results I want in image trace. I have the original file and my settings. The first one came out individual polygons. The second attempt was using the clear boundary button, and it gave me a thicker “pixelated” image. Third, I tried to reduce the threshold and lost a lot. The 4th attempt was “sketch” trace on and tried to max out the optimization. I am still getting double boundary line. Is it a poor quality image? I have traced
US trace v.1.lbrn2 (533.4 KB)

.png files before with decent results.

[Dskall (D Kallenberger)]

I would try Inkscape, Lightburn can’t do a center trace unfortunately.
Maybe after they get thru with their CNC software and ability to vcarve they will put that ability into Lightburn.

[nelsonmay]

Thanks. I will try illustrator.

[baricl1317 (Loren Baric)]

Try this one. There’s some little marks around the outside around the bottom but should be easy to cleanup. Careful, this design is not grouped. All states are individual. Save the original.

[nelsonmay]

Thank you. I see them. I will erase them in Photoshop.

[baricl1317 (Loren Baric)]

There’s a ton of little dots and junk there. I erased all i could find. Here’s the cleaned up lightburn file.

US States.lbrn2 (119.3 KB)

[MikeyH (Mike Hembrey)]

Those little dots at the bottom of Florida are the Florida Keys. I hope you did not zap them!

[baricl1317 (Loren Baric)]

I know what they were. I just cleaned it up so i can use it myself. Those were nothing more than dots on the image. He still has the original svg file and my cleanup was in a lightburn file. So he can keep everything as is if he wants.

[nelsonmay]

I am asking this question to all of you in this thread. I am ready to take this to a laser. I have to cut out the outside and burn lines for the states. Since these are individual states all put together, do I use the bezier tool and connect the perimeter, then group each inner “state boundary” on a layer.

Or, do you guys simply make this a .jpeg and do another image trace?
USA outline and states.lbrn2 (95.8 KB)

[thelmuth (Tim Helmuth)]

This file is no where near ready to run. Pick any spot and zoom in and you will see overlaps and disconnected lines. These should all be fixed before engraving.Once you have the overlaps and open shapes resolved, you can go to Optomization Settings and enable the Remove Overlapping Lines Function. That will make the engraving better and faster.

This view shows all the open shapes. The filled ones are closed.

[nelsonmay]

I knew that and figured you guys would see it. Someone here made it for me last week and I knew I would have to clean it up. I am getting laser time this evening and wanted to make sure I could do this in the next few hours.

I still have to cut the USA and laser the states at a lower power. After I optimize this, amI Abe to create a perimeter on one layer and the inner lines for state on another layer. I have never done this.

[thelmuth (Tim Helmuth)]

The way I would do this is use the Offset Tool and create a very small offset of the map, selecting Outer Shapes Only, then move the offset to a cut layer. But until you have a map without breaks in the perimiter, you cannot achieve that. This is what I came up with using a 1mm offset. It could be fixed with Node Editing.

You still need to fix all the state lines, but this gives you an outline to cut.
Cut Layer USA outline and states.lbrn2 (154.2 KB)

[baricl1317 (Loren Baric)]

Here’s one 2 layer flag i just finished with the whole design but not individual states. For your next flag project. I actually started with the file i sent this gentleman earlier but thought the outline was too busy so i did this one with a little cleaner outline

American Flag W_Outline V2 9 Final.lbrn2 (337.2 KB)

[nelsonmay]

Thank you so much. I had to tone some areas down as well. As I have been cutting, I notice that smaller objects can get messed up by the kerf on the next pass.