Cutting (Vector) vs. Engraving (Raster)

Cutting (Vector)

During a cutting operation, the cutting head fires a continuous laser at the material to slice through it. In order to know where to cut, the laser cutter driver reads all of the vector paths in the designed piece. Once you send your file to a laser cutter, only lines that register as only hairline or vector graphics with the smallest possible line thickness will be cut by the laser. All other graphics, like any images or thicker lines, will be rastered, which I’ll explain in a bit. The laser, when supplied with the right settings, will cut all the way through your material, so vector cutting is normally used for cutting out the outline of the part as well as any features or holes that you want to cut out of the material.

Engraving (Raster)

Rastering is a lot different than vector cutting; instead of cutting all the way through the workpiece, the laser will burn off the top layer of the material you are cutting to create two color (and sometimes grayscale) images using the raster effect. In order to raster materials, the laser will usually be set to a lower power than it would when vector cutting material, and instead of shooting down a pulsing beam, it creates fine dots at a selected DPI (dots per inch) so that the laser doesn’t really cut all the way through. The DPI directly correlates to the image resolution and affects how fine an image appears, exactly like image resolution on a computer. By adjusting the DPI you can control the laser’s effect on the material. Rastering on some materials comes out really clearly, while you may not get exactly what you expected on other materials. Before you raster for the first time, make sure you experiment with the settings until you get the desired effect!