/ 01
Strokes only — no fills
A filled shape leaves us guessing where the cut goes: the edge of the fill, or the line you drew? A plain stroked path is one unambiguous cut.
Sending files
Send a file that cuts right the first time.
Most files that fail, fail the same few ways — and every one of them is avoidable before you hit send. Five rules, each with the reason behind it. Follow them and your file goes straight to the laser, not back to your inbox.
- STROKES ONLY
- CLOSED PATHS
- OUTLINED TEXT
- ONE LINE PER CUT
- 1:1 IN INCHES
The five rules
Why files fail — and how yours won’t.
/ 02
No stroke color, no thickness
The cut follows the centerline of your path — color and line weight carry no meaning at the laser. Check with Illustrator’s outline view (Cmd+Y): if it looks right as pure line work, it comes to us clean.
/ 03
Close every path
The laser cuts loops — an open or dangling path is a shape that can’t be cut out of the sheet. Every cut path should end exactly where it started.
/ 04
Outline your text
Type → Create Outlines. Your fonts live on your computer, not ours — outlined text turns letters into real paths that cut exactly as you see them.
/ 05
One line per cut
Doubled or overlapping lines look identical on screen but ask for the same edge to be cut twice. Delete the duplicates so each cut exists exactly once.
/ QC
Miss one? We’ll catch it.
Every file is checked before anything cuts — units detected, open paths and duplicate lines flagged. But a clean file quotes faster and cuts sooner.
What we accept
Send what you have.
.DXFBEST
The native language of cut parts. If you have it, send it.
.DWG
Read alongside DXF — same checks, same result.
.AI
A modern .ai is a PDF under the hood — we read the true curves inside it directly.
.PDF
Vector paths read as drawn. Keep it to line work, not a scan.
.SVG
Accepted — the same rules above apply.
One thing we never do: flatten your curves into hundreds of tiny straight segments the way generic converters do. A curve in your file is cut as a real arc — a circle stays a circle.
Flattened from 3D, or from a 3D scanner? Send it as-is — don’t trace or redraw anything. Files flattened out of 3D CAD or scan software usually arrive with their curves written as splines; we read those curves directly and refit them into true arcs. (The “not a scan” note above means a photo or bitmap — a 3D-scanned part exported to DXF or DWG is welcome.)
Size
Scale is never a guess.
A file with no stated size is a part we can’t cut — design programs default to points or pixels, and “about this big” isn’t a dimension. Either of these works. Just tell us which.
OPTION A — DRAW AT ACTUAL SIZE
Set your document units to inches and draw 1:1 at the finished cut size. What’s on your screen is what comes off the laser.
OPTION B — STATE THE SIZE
Tell us one finished dimension when you send the file — “the widest point is 14 inches” — and we scale everything to it.
After you hit send
What happens to your file.
-
01
Units detected
Inches or millimeters — detected and stated, never assumed.
-
02
Curves restored
Curves that arrive exploded into tiny line segments are rebuilt into true arcs — and cut as real arcs, never hundreds of tiny lines.
-
03
Every path checked
Open paths, duplicate lines and dirty geometry are caught before anything reaches the machine.
-
04
Fidelity proven
The result is measured against your original file — the part we cut is the part you drew.