I’ve been playing around with getting my new laser working, and so far things have been going well. One thing I struggle with has been cutting thicker pieces without burning the final piece to hell. Looking around at all the different “how to” videos, one common suggestion is to not directly cut the path with wobble, but to offset and fill with a deep engrave over multiple passes, distributing the heat and giving the piece more time to cool.
That works great and all, but it’s such a tedious manual process, since I have to do it with every outline of every design I want to work with. It would be so much better if I could just select something like “Filled Stroke” in the pass settings, set a width, do all the “fill” settings, and let lightburn do all the shape offset and boolean steps for me without actually modifying the file. It would also allow me to use sublayers more effectively (one “Filled Stroke” sublayer with a few passes for cutting, then another slightly larger for cleaning out the cut, then back to cutting, etc). It’d probably be a good idea to be able to specify “inside” vs “outside” vs “both” like how the current path offset tool works (honestly, were I implementing the feature I’d just use that tool and feed it the settings under the hood). And finally, once I get my settings dialed in for a material+thickness I can just save the layer settings and load it on the next design without having to do all the manual stuff again. Just load file, apply material settings, click go…
It would be especially nice if we could select a “start” and “end” width that lightburn would interpolate between over the specified number of passes, allowing easy bevel engravings or being able to trench through a thicker piece, expanding the slot as we go to make it easier for debris to be cleared out.