I recently came across a company called Ponoko that will laser cut a design of your choice into a large number of materials.
As an experiment I decided to create a reproduction grille cloth backing cardboard for my 16B 'shouldered' tombstone since the original one was pretty shot (looks better than it is in the photo).
Here are the steps I took:
scanned the original backing cardboard and cleaned it up in Photoshop
opened the image file in Illustrator and used the 'Image Trace' feature to turn into into vector art
simplified jagged edges and other imperfections (mostly to reduce cost since laser time = money)
colored edges based on what I wanted Ponoko's lasers to do (blue = cut, red = engrave stroke, black = engrave area)
created an account on Ponoko (they currently allow you to make your first product for free - up to $20)
uploaded the Illustrator EPS file
selected material (boring old corrugated cardboard)
placed the order
Here is what arrived in the mail:
They send you the full piece of material you used - each side covered with white stick-on paper (looks like to protect the material while cutting).
Peel off the paper and...voila!
Cutting edge technology used to restore a 1935 radio.
If you'd like to use the design for yourself, here it is (public domain - costs is just materials and shipping):
This time a new backer for my 16B 'Peak Top' Tombstone (the later version). The old backer was disintegrating so I decided to scan it in and go the laser cutter route again.
Rather than cardboard, this time I selected hardboard since the thickness of 0.118" is a close match for the original.
The design is available at Ponoko. I also attached the EPS file here in case you want to modify it.
It cost $30 total ($6 material, $14.80 laser cutting, $9.50 shipping). Yeah, not exactly cheap. But maybe it makes up for it in cool factor? Anyway, here was what Ponoko sent back:
Yes - Illustrator is for working with 'vector' line art - as opposed to Photoshop which is primarily for pixel based 'bitmap' formats. There is some overlap and each program complements the other.
In this case I scanned the old backer into Photoshop first and cleaned up any imperfections in the scan (dust, tears in the original backer). The I imported that into Illustrator and used the 'Image Trace' feature to make the conversion to vector art.
