I have a Sculpfun S9 and I am cutting a design out of 6mm plywood which takes 30 passes at 100% and 100mm/m.
When I set the laser to make these passes in one go the laser doesn’t cut out the whole design in one pass and then starts again for the second, etc. but cuts it out in short lengths 30 times. This causes bad scorching.
If I set the layer to cut once, run the pass, then run it again and again 30 times it produces a neat cut.
I know I can copy the design onto 30 layers and it will work but surely there is a simpler method.
I did look at the Auto Join but it is greyed out.
Thank you for helping and probably putting up with a dumb question.
thank you for your interest. I’m not sure a video or the design would help as the issue is more one of settings I guess. It would also be very difficult to capture in video as the movements are so quick.
If I explain the issue in a simple example it may be helpful.
Assume I have drawn an octogon and I want the laser to make five passes to cut through the material used. I want the laser to make one complete pass of the octogon before commencing the next pass.
What actually happens is that the laser cuts one side of the octogon before moving onto the next side.
I have been able to achieve what I want by (in the example above) copying the octogon five times onto five layers and then positioning all five octogons exactly on top of each other. The laser then cuts/passes over one whole octogon before the next.
Thank you for the clarification of what is happening. Does this actually occur with a octagon on your system, or was this just a simple example of what is happening with your larger file?
I was asking for the lbrn2 file to look at your design for errors as this is not normal operation.
The octagon was an example. I have now found a work around. Again using this example I copy and paste the octagon four times putting each on a seperate layer and then centre all four images onto each other (Ctrl-Home I believe).
I then set the laser settings for each layer the same and when I run this the laser cuts a complete octagon, then a second pass and so forth. Cutting the five passes but doing one complete pass each time.
If I set the octagon to five passes it cuts each edge five times before moving onto the next.
How are you creating the octogon? It sounds like it’s a collection of 8 lines rather than a closed shape. If I create an octogon in Lightburn and set to 5 passes, it cuts the enitre shape before moving on to the next pass, the exact behavior you’re desiring.
If creating a closed shape is not an option for whatever reson, there is a beter workflow than creating multiple copies. In the Cut Settings Editor, add 4 sublayers with the same cut settings. This will cause the entire shape to burn on each layer. This eliminates any possibility of alignment issue when duplicating the shapes.
This is going to be a bit unwieldy, especially as the design scales.
If I’m understanding what you want correctly I’ll offer a slightly cleaner hack for the behavior you want to get.
Start with your original design, no duplicate shapes on duplicate layers.
Set # of passes on cut layer to 1
Open the Cut Settings Editor on the layer you’re working with
Use the + button to increase the number of sub-layers. This only goes up to 11 as an arbitrary limit. I suggest setting this to 10. Make sure each sub-layer pass has the appropriate settings.
Run the job 3 separate times to get you the 30 overall passes you want.
I’ll have to work my way through that as a beginner but that could be a shortcut.
I have attached an example which may help and I have put the same design on 30 layers and not tried the above shortcut yet..
So, I want to cut out these two clock hands but as my laser is quite weak, a Sculpfun S9, I have to set it quite high and still do a number of passes. When the laser cuts out the hands by the time it starts on the next pass the material has cooled down and the design is cut very neatly with no scorching. However, when it comes to the small holes it does 30 passes, heats up the material and scorches badly.
In a perfect world what I want is for the laser to cut the whole design once on each pass. Allowing the material to cool and having a very neat cut.
I think I found a way to get the results you’re looking for. First, get rid of all the duplicate shapes, leaving just one copy of the clock hands and hole. Group the shapes together (both sets). Create 1 duplicate and set it to a different color layer. Repeat this step again. That will give you the same shape on top of each other 3 times, each with a different color.
Now, select one layer in the Cuts/layers panel and double click to bring up cut settings. In this dialog box set all 3 layers to the proper speed and power settings with only 1 pass. You can select the different layers from the left side of the dialog. Once you have those set properly, click the clone layer button 9 times. (see images below) This will give you a total of 10 sublayers for that color. Repeat for the other 2 colors. This will give you a total of 30 cuts, with each shape being completely cut (hole and outline) before repeating. When you click OK, your cuts/Layers will say multi instead of line. We have to do it this way because we are limited to 11 sublayers per color.
I did try it with setting to 3 passes for each sublayer, which works, but because of the algorithm it runs 6 passes on the hole between sublayers. The way I did it above it only does 2.
Beware, the outer shape may cut completely before finishing and the entire hand may shift slightly before finishing the holes.
