After seeing a few etched laptops recently, I've been thinking about getting it done myself. I like the idea of customizing my stuff and laser etching my new MBP would be a great way to make it my own and to serve as a theft deterrent at the same time.

I'm looking for ideas since I'm not really good at this sort of thing and there's lots of talented people who visit this forum. I'm mainly looking for something techy possibly mixed in with something organic like a tree or something else. My first idea was some some sort of PCB design (xbox mobo??) but i'm not sure how that would look if it covered the whole lid (maybe just a corner would be enough?).

It would have to stand the test of time and not be a fad that I'm gonna get tired of in the future.

Here are 2 that I particularly like if it's any help:


Link
(nice except for the flowers)

Thanks to anyone who can give me some ideas.
(BTW, it's a 17" MBP)

Phil

To have anything etched you will need to have it in layered, vector format. The printer/etcher will charge you to vectorise it. So, a much simpler design would be less costly. The design in the pic you showed uses ps 'brushes' that are very popular/common (to a very nice effect though IMO). That's good and bad - the good is that you could redraw it layered quite easily, the bad is that ps brushes aren't vector...

I have a feeling you are going to either take a massive learning curve or pay dearly for a design such as that. if you have a friend whose capable, it would definately pay to have them 'vectorise' your design before getting quotes for etching.

good luck

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laser-etch/

Thanks for the info guys. gasclown, I don't have much experience with graphic design but would something like Adobe Illustrator work with vectors? I've never used it before.

Yes, Illustrator is one of the inustry standards for creating vectors. Vectors are basically mathematical shapes, so they can be scaled to any size, versus bitmap, which are set pixels at one size.

I came across this the other day. Pretty interesting:
http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/

Wow, thanks for that link. Could come in very useful down the road once i get a design finalized.

Hey, yep. I can almost garantee that your file will neeed to be outputted through illustrator anyway. Throughout the course of the year I prepare a fair number of files for etchwork (glass or stainless signage mostly) and it always needs to be a vector AI file with curves (type converted to shapes). But the flicker gallery SICKdimension showed, had some stuff that looked raster to me... perhaps vector isn't a requisite for some jobs/machines.

You'll probably find, however, that they are simply run through 'Live Trace' in illustrator or another proprietry program. problem with that is that the created paths need so much work that you were better off drawing from scratch in the first place. IME, auto-vectorising can leave very fine lines that show up in the etchwork even though they appear solid in workfile, rounds get flattenned, angles get sharpenned etc.

Hope it helps, wouldn't want to see you crapping up yr mac .

I say the more advice, the better. I paid a hefty sum for this so I'm not gonna see it ruined.

I never realised it would be this complicated. I don't even have a design yet. It's probably going to be a few months or maybe a year before I actually get it done.

You've inspired me Getting the pic from the link in my sig, etched on mine (minus the text, all at one depth). Will post a pic here when its done.

Ha, I wish it was that easy for me...