Blog
Kerf, DXF units, cut order and what your machine actually takes — answered with the numbers rather than with adjectives.
Embroidery digitizing for beginners
Digitizing is turning artwork into instructions for a needle: where to go, in what stitch, in what order. Five words cover most of it.
PES vs DST vs JEF: which embroidery file do you need?
They hold the same stitches. What differs is which machines read them and whether the colours travel with the file.
How to digitize a logo for embroidery
Digitizing a logo means deciding, for every part of it, which stitch sews it, in what order and at what density. Here are the decisions, in the order they matter.
Free embroidery converter: what is free, and what it converts best
A free embroidery converter turns a picture into stitches a machine can sew. Here is what this one does for nothing, what it sews well, and where a paid digitiser is still worth the money.
How to etch a PCB at home: from a sketch or Gerber to a finished board
Most home-etched boards that fail, fail before the etchant: a print scaled by the printer, a mask printed the wrong way round, toner that never stuck, tracks too thin to survive. Here is the whole process, with the numbers that decide whether it works.
Schematic to PCB: how KiCad and EasyEDA do it, and what AI actually automates
No program turns a drawing of a circuit into a finished board by itself. Here is what "convert schematic to PCB" really does in KiCad and EasyEDA, the order of the steps that follow, and where the AI tools fit.
Your DXF came out the wrong size. Here is why
A DXF has no pixels in it, so a converter that thinks in pixels has to guess. Most guess 1 unit per pixel, and a 2000px logo arrives two metres wide.
Kerf: why your laser-cut part is always a bit too small
A cutter removes material. If the tool runs down the middle of your line, the part finishes one tool width undersize and the hole finishes one tool width oversize. Here is the arithmetic.
That SVG has a PNG inside it, and it will not cut
Several online converters produce an SVG that opens, looks right, and contains your original bitmap in an image tag. There is nothing in it for a blade to follow.
Heat transfer vinyl is cut mirrored, and ordinary vinyl is not
Cut HTV the right way round and you press a backwards logo onto a shirt. Cut ordinary vinyl mirrored and you weed the wrong side. Only the operator knows which is on the roll.
Colour, mono or centerline: which trace you actually want
Three modes that produce three completely different files from the same image, and picking the wrong one is why the result looked nothing like what you expected.
Cut the holes first, or the part moves
The order a machine cuts in is not cosmetic. Cut the outline before the holes and the part drops, tilts or shifts, and everything after that is wrong.
How big does an image need to be before it traces well?
Around 1000 pixels on the long edge for a logo. Below about 500 the edges are already soft, and a tracer follows that softness faithfully, because it cannot know the blur was not intended.
What file does my cutter actually want?
SVG, DXF, PLT or G-code, and the answer is not a preference. Each machine takes some of them and not others, and two of them carry real units while the other two need telling.