I spent the day yesterday converting the dash panels that I had created before as images into Vector Art. Typically the engraving/cutting machines take in vector art in the form of Adobe Illustrator, EPS or PDF format. From what I’ve seen these machines also generally take in a maximum sheet size of 12″ x 24″, which is how I’ve laid out the panels.
The lines that are 0.001″ thick will typically be cut by the machine and the lines thicker than 0.011 will be engraved into the surface. Typically the artwork needs to all be in black and white where the black areas are the surfaces that will be engraved. Another modification that needs to be done when exporting is converting all the text/fonts to paths so that the machine knows how to engrave them.
You can then choose which type of engraving colors you want such as black with white lettering etc. So far I’ve found that the standard thickness of the engraving material is 1/16″ but you can also special order 1/8″ material. Personally I want something thicker than the 1/16″ to give the panels a chunkier feeling.
I’ve attached the PDF versions of this post in case anyone is interested in using them 🙂
The Fab 12 
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