Feature Request: Slow down around corners, helpful for diodes

Hi, thanks for this great software!
I have a few quick feature requests for you to consider:

Option to slow down around corners:
I run a ~6.5w optical power 450nm NUBM44 diode laser and I’ve noticed that many of the straight sections of a part will cut all the way through in 1-2 passes but it could take another 4+ passes to get through the rounded corners of a part. I understand that part of this relates to the fact that the diode beam is rectangular so it cuts better along the beam’s long axis. However, if we had the option to ramp the feed rate down as it enters and exits rounded corners it would really help diodes get the job done in less passes.

Option to specify the diode beam angle: (Very similar to the request above)
Diode lasers project a small rectangular beam. The diode tends to cut best along the beam’s long axis. Best practice suggests mounting your diode such that the beam projects at a 45 degree angle relative to the x-axis so that you have more balanced cutting throughout your part. This does help but I think this can be cleverly compensated for in software as well. If you allow the user to specify the beam angle the program could compensate by adjusting the feed rate as a function of the beam angle and direction of travel, causing the machine to move slower in areas not aligned with the beam angle. This should yield more balanced cuts throughout the part and reduce the number of passes necessary to get a clean cut through all areas of the part.

Quicker setting adjustments using mouse scroll wheel:
Adobe products like Photoshop have a very simple yet useful feature. When you hover your mouse over a setting (like text size, line width, etc.) and move the scroll wheel on the mouse it will increment/decrement the value of the setting. Its a very very handy feature and I would love to see it implemented in LightBurn :slight_smile:

I hope others see these as useful features as well!

Thanks for everything,

-Nick

Your laser controller already does this. The reason it’s not cutting through is that it correspondingly lowers the power as well, so you get an even, consistent burn. The 0.9.21 release adds the option to choose ‘Constant Power’ mode for GRBL devices, meaning you can tell the system not to adjust the power based on speed, which is preferable when cutting.

LightBurn already does this. What operating system are you using?

  1. Hah, no kidding? Well thanks for the update! :clap:

  2. I could have swore this didn’t work when I tried in the past but I just tried it now and it works! Excellent! Are we able to adjust the increment size? For example, when I scroll on the Speed (mm/m) box it increments by 300. I personally would prefer to adjust in steps of 25 or 50. I didn’t see an option in the settings for this.

Those are not configurable by the user, however I can update the system to use smaller increments when in mm/min mode.

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