Can anyone tell me the best way to get artwork created in Lightburn to an Epilog Laser?
I use Lightburn for my diode lasers, and of course it works great on them. I have been asked to help get the local high school wood shop class’s Epilog Zing 30 watt CO2 laser working so the students can use it. The laser seems to be in perfect condition.
Unfortunately Epilog does not have Lightburn support (and it sounds like it never will). Epilog does not have design software and recommends designing in Corel or alternatively in Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape and then “printing” to the Epilog print manager. So, if I need to Export from Lightburn into something like Corel or Inkscape, which is the best file format to use. SVG, AI or DXF?
I can’t Print directly from Lightburn since Epilog lasers require cuts (Lines in Lightburn ) to have a Stroke of 0.003" (0.076mm) or less otherwise they treat the lines as a fill. And Lightburn doesn’t allow setting the stroke of a line.
So, I’m looking for the easiset path to get designs created in Lightburn to an Epilog laser.
Thanks for any suggestions from anyone that uses Lightburn and an Epilog laser.
If you have the newer Epilog Dashboard software, you can try printing out of Lightburn (print with colors). It will open the Epilog driver for Zing, and you can then separate the file with colors in Dashboard. If it is an older machine with the older driver, I don’t think that option works.
Inkscape will not allow you to print correctly to the driver. You first need to set your colors to primarily RGB RED for cut, RGB blue for score, and RGB black for fill (engrave). Then set the cut and score lines to the correct stroke width. Then export a PDF from Inkscape, and print that file to the driver.
SVG is probably the way to go. I guess I will need to experiment some. You are also right about the AI DPI setting which has caused me problems a few times in the past when I forgot about it going from an AI file to Lightburn.
So far it has been challenging just going from Inkscape to the Epilog laser since the Epilog is very particular about how it wants to see “Cut” lines. Epilog seems to favor Corel (I didn’t even know Corel was still around). I really wish Epilog would just give Lightburn access to its APIs so we could have a powerful but very user friendly program to interface with its machines, but I believe it wants to keep its customers locked into its proprietary ecosystem.
Thanks. It is a 2017 Epilog Zing so it uses a Printer Driver and the “Laser Dashboard”. It can adjust the Speed and Power settings based on RGB colors but it seems like the cut lines need to first be set to the tiny stroke size or the driver treats it as a raster. And it appears that Inkscape does other things with its vector lines that the Epilog driver doesn’t like.
I think I will have the students use Corel for the design software, since it has a simpler interface than Inkscape or AI. But I have some Lightburn files that I will want to bring over and based on my experience with the Epilog software so far I want to make the cleanest transfer from a Lightburn file to the Epilog.
My primary machine is now an Epilog Fusion Pro 48. I still do about half of my design work in LightBurn, as there are a lot of things there that are much easier and quicker to do than in CorelDraw. Whenever I create a project in LightBurn to run on my Epilog machine, I’ll export it to an SVG file and import that to CorelDraw to send to the print driver for the machine. Been doing that for quite some time, and have found it to typically be the most trouble free option to get things where they need to be.
Hi - regarding using Lightburn for the software only (not the print driver to send the job to the laser) - is it possible to use it to create the built in test grids for material testing and export them for use in the Epilog dashboard software? This is a feature we are sorely lacking. - Gus
Gus, There really isn’t an easy way to get a test grid on a Epilog machine due to the way their software works. You could certainly push over a grid of colored squares, but you’d have to split it all by colors and set each and every color separately in Job Manager to the speed, power and lpi you want. They have actually built a test grid generator in to the latest versions of the dashboard for their G100 Galvo machine, but haven’t enabled it for the gantry machines. You can install a dummy profile for a G100, generate a test grid, then open it up for your gantry machine and adjust settings, but it’s still lot of work, and not perfect as it’s using different parameters for things for the Galvo setup. But, hopefully they will get that pushed over to the Gantry side sometime soon.
Here is a link to a Test Grid that I use. I have a Universal Laser Systems VLS6.60, but it should work for an Epilog. You can just open the PDF file, and turn off layers you don’t need. The engrave is set up as percentages of black. You might only want to check 10,20,30,40,50,60,70,80,90,100%.
I mostly run with 40% Power, 55% speed, and 500 PPI.
Note to LB users: This test grid only works for lasers like Universal Laser Systems, Epilog, and Trotec.
