Free heartbeat SVG files

What the line shows

A heartbeat line is a simplified electrocardiogram, the trace a heart monitor draws. Each beat has a small round bump as the upper chambers squeeze, a sharp tall spike as the lower chambers fire, and a broader bump as the heart resets. Doctors call them the P wave, the QRS complex and the T wave. The lifelike design here keeps all three; the others sharpen the bumps into points, which reads better at small sizes.

ECG is the English abbreviation and EKG comes from the German spelling; they are the same thing.

Sizes and cutting

Most of these are wide strips, 100 mm long and 30 to 45 mm tall. The line is about 3 mm wide on the standard designs, so a strip can be cut as short as 60 mm in vinyl and still weed easily. The thin line is 1.9 mm wide: keep it at 150 mm or longer.

A long thin line stretches when you lift it. Leave the strip on its backing, lay transfer tape over the whole length, and peel the backing away from the tape, not the tape from the backing. To fit a name into the line, cut a gap in the flat part with the Slice tool and set the text there.

How to open the files

• Cricut Design Space: choose Upload, pick the SVG, and add it to the canvas. Set the width you want; the shape is already welded.
• Silhouette Studio: Designer Edition and above open the SVG. The free Basic Edition does not, so open the DXF instead.
• LightBurn, xTool Creative Space and Glowforge: import the SVG, then set the layer to cut, score or engrave.
• Inkscape, Illustrator and Affinity: open the SVG. It is a plain filled path, so you can recolour it, add a stroke or combine it with your own work.
• Printing or sublimation: use the PNG, which has a transparent background.

Each design page lists the file’s narrowest part at seven sizes, so you can tell whether it will survive at the size you plan to cut.

Questions