Fill+line [OR] Line+fill

Hello to All,
I am very new here but I have had the opportunity to use Lightburn for 2 months almost every day. The whole CNC thing and DTP is not new to me at all, so I can ensure you guys this is not some newbie, wannabe smartegg suggestion at entry. I found that the fill+line option is working much better to me if I swap the order and do it manually line+fill. if the laser burns the line first, it creates a kind of frontier, so next time when the fill comes over there the previously burned line acts as a border. the result is way much sharper and clean than the other way around. You can check this trick and if the Lightburn team also find this order better than at is the standard I am happy I was able to help a little bit.

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This is interesting and plausible that it would result in a different end product. Do you happen to have photos showing the difference?

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i did not tried with Bitmap images. Only pure vector. But the result was so obvious that i could not dare to change to my order (i just tried this in the middle of the job) in the body text, because it would be too obvious. i used it though on the headline after. And i am using air assist. The material i used was a cement+PVA coated furniture board.

That’s an interesting material choice. What’s the surface texture of this like? I assume fairly rough? I’m guessing that the material has an impact on how much of a difference the burn order makes.

Also, is PVA safe to burn? I haven’t explored it.

Yes, PVA is totally safe if you burn it. The surface entirely depends on you. To me in this project the goal was to achieve a concrete surface. So I used 3 different shade of mix (greys). used brush, throvel, and some sandpaper after the set. But there are infinite variation and result you can achieve. At the end, after the burn, i sprayed it with matte acrylic laquier. It looks like a massive and heavy concrete slate, with engraving (not too deep tough, but its ok)

An option may be to duplicate the characters, on different layers, run the ‘line’ on the first and then the ‘fill’ on the second…

:smiley_cat:

This is what @Attila is actually suggesting. He found that doing this manually has better results than relying on the fill+line where the line comes after.

I am brand new to laser cutters and the software but just wanted to say that I too found this method much more precise. I didn’t create two separate layers as suggested by jkwilborn (though I was thinking of trying it that way too) but I ran a simple text layer as just “line” first and then again as “fill”. Came out just as you say, nicely bordered. Then I tried running the all-in-one line+fill option (expecting the same result). The fill worked well but then when it lines the fill, the line was very wobbly. Pretty strange! I’ve only had a chance to test it the one time and was burning veg-tanned leather.

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I am happy that you are happy with the result, and i am glad you confirmed it. Still waiting for an answer from the board, because honestly i think its worth a change for the next update. I think it would be nice if others as well can confirm this result. Thank you!

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I suggest making a feature request to offer this operation. Then it can collect upvotes to help prioritize functionality.

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