How to make lightburn engrave from top to bottom instead of bottom to top

[Durtdawber (Donnie Smith)]

I’ve got a Chinese 50w Rudia controller. I’m having issues with soot buildup due to where my air assist is located. Currently my engravings do all shapes from the bottom right corner toward the top. I want my engravings to start at the top and engrave downward. What settings do I need to change in LB to make this happen?

[Grumpy_Old_Man (Anthony Bolgar)]

Change the scan angle to 180 degrees in the cut settings window

[Durtdawber (Donnie Smith)]

Thank you very much. I always wondered what that setting did.

Is there any way to make that the default setting for all new projects?

Donnie

[LightBurn (Oz)]

LightBurn will remember the settings on each layer between projects, but if you load an old one with the old setting, then make a new one, it will have remembered the last setting you used.

A better approach is to use the Material Library and just store the settings you like for images as an entry there.

This forum post covers how to set it up and use it:

How to use the material library?

I was trying to use the material library in LB and it isn’t doing what I expected. I went to the documentation on GitHub and am still was having problems. There is a video that is linked to from the document but it goes to Vimeo ( Video Tutorial #1: Using the Material Library) but it comes back with a error saying it can’t find the page. I looked on the YouTube page and couldn’t find it either. I’m just looking for a more in depth description of how to do things in the library and figured tha…

[Durtdawber (Donnie Smith)]

Thanks Oz. I’ve already got a library going that I add to when I learn new settings. I’ll add this to it also.

Sure would be nice if there was a default setting in the preferences so we would not have to remember to change it. (hint hint).

Donnie

[LightBurn (Oz)]

I will likely add an option to reset everything to defaults when you create a new file - it’s been requested before.

[Squid]

And if someone like me would like all scans to start from top to bottom, can this be part of the global settings rather than for each cut? you should keep the per-cut direction settings but in global settings we should have the option to scan from top to bottom. frankly, i never really understood the bottom to top scan.

[LightBurn (Oz)]

The scan angle handles it all - top to bottom, bottom to top, left to right, and angled are all covered by this single value.

Bottom to top is the default because most machines exhaust toward the rear and pulling smoke over the parts that have just been engraved will cause the smoke to stick to them, either because of wood sap or melted plastic, depending on material.

Bottom to top, for the most common case, provides a cleaner engraving.

[Squid]

Fair enough. i was not aware of smoke sticking back on.