Customized Ink Stamps/Rubber Stamps for Logos, Shapes, Phrases…
HOW TO PREPARE YOUR FILE FOR AN INK STAMP/RUBBER STAMP
1. Prepare your graphic
When preparing your logo or any graphic with laser technology it is very important that your image be worked on with a vector base program. Illustrator and Corel Draw are the most popular and easy programs to use. Once you have your graphic, open it in any of those programs to get started.
Image 1: This is the image we want to make into a stamp. We’ll be using Illustrator for it.
2. Outline it
Outlining Shapes – The colored areas of your image is what will be “stamped” on the paper. Once you’re happy with the result, you need to get rid of the filling and leave only the outline of your shapes. Press ‘D’ for ‘Default fill and Stroke’.
Image 2: Press “D” or click the arrows from your left side tool box.
Image 4. Then, we need to get rid of the white Fill. Select the [No Fill] option from the upper left corner of the tool bar.
Outlining Fonts – If you have written text in any Font, you need to outline that too. Go to the “Type” menu and select “Create Outlines” or click Shift+Ctrl+O.
Image 5. Now you have your outlines.
3. Create the shape of your stamp.
Create the shape you want for your stamp. It can be a rectangle or a circle, depends on your preference, and make sure that the shape has no fill and a colored outline stroke. Make it so your logo stays inside of it.
Image 6. We want a rectangle-shaped stamp, so we put our logo inside a red rectangle shape with no fill.
4. Check if your shapes are thick enough
Since we’ll be engraving on rubber, you don’t want your shapes to be too thin. Otherwise they won’t be sturdy enough to make a beautiful clear stamp. Check that the thinnest shapes are at least 0.3 mm thick.
Image 7. Draw a line with the pencil and hold it to use it as a ruler from border to border of your shape. Hold the line to display the length of it. This shape for example is 0.16mm, so it’s too thin.
To correct this, go to “Object>Path>Offset Path” and add up the necessary millimeters until 0.3. In this case we added up 0.1mm (0.16 + 0.10 on each side = 0.36mm)
Image 8. Offset Path window. Click on ‘preview’ to review your changes.
5. Ungroup it
Now that we have our outlines ready, we need to ungroup all the paths to avoid problems while the laser reads your file. Go to “Object>>Ungroup”. Repeat as many times as necessary until the “Ungroup” option is no longer clickable.
Image 9. Select everything and Ungroup it all at the “Object” menu on top or by clicking Shift+Ctrl+G
6. Export it
To export your file, go to “File>>Export” and select .DXF as the output format. When the “DXF/DWG Export Options” window appears, be sure that the scale is set to Millimeters and click OK to save your file.
