Import Gcode's layers

Is there a way to import gcode’s layers which i sliced with a slicer (Cura) to LightBurn?
If not, any recommendation for open source converter which will allow me to use my 3D designs in lightburn will be more than appreciated.

Thx.

What’s your end goal?

To Laser cut instead of 3D print.
The more I use LB and my cutter, the more i see the benefits. 3D printing is both time consuming and limited to plastics so if i can cut sheets and glue these together this would be great. I can slice to which layer/sheet thickness i need.

Well it might be hard finding .2mm plastic sheets. But you have some options like Fusion 360 that has a slicer plugin that would let you do this. There’s also a program called LuBan that does this, and has a lot of options. You basically give it your stl/obj/whatever, set the full size, then set things like layer thickness, dowel holes, etc. I used it briefly when it first came out, so I’m sure there are plenty of new things in it too.

I can slice to any layer/sheet thickness that suits my material.

2mm layer/sheet


4mm layer/sheet

That’s true, I didn’t even think about it. Then I guess the hard part would be making sure the gcode is compatible with your laser, and then separating out each layer as it’s own cut file.

I am not following the OP question. What are you asking? Haven’t played with Cura but have used the Fusion360 Slicer. They allow output via several file formats that are supported in LightBurn.

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@Blake Followed your suggestion. will try this out:
https://apps.autodesk.com/FUSION/en/Detail/Index?id=8699194120463301363&os=Win64&appLang=en

That’s really going to be the best, I think. That, or LuBan. That way you get dxf or svg output, instead of just pure gcode.

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I see many complains about this plugin but I will give it a try anyway.
It would be nice though for LB to be able to not only play gcodes but to extract layers from imported gcodes but i have no idea how difficult would it be to add that to LB. maybe one day…

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Slicer does have its issues, but for the most part, works.

I still have no idea what you mean by “nice though for LB to be able to not only play gcodes but to extract layers from imported gcodes”. There are no layers defined in gcode so what you are asking for does not make sense to me. LightBurn already does more than just “play gcode”.

Let’s try this, please reword what you would like LightBurn to do.

He wants to be able to extract geometry from gcode - It would mean looking for G1 moves, handling G90 / G91, possibly arc moves as well, and units (metric / imperial). Probably not fantastically hard to do. I can look at it, but it’d be worth adding to http://lightburn.fider.io so I can get a feel for how much interest there is.

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So, select and read existing gcode, extract relevant data to then auto-build a LightBurn file complete with layers and cut settings defined. Is that an accurate description?

@Squid, If correct, please post this request to our Feature Request site after reviewing this:

Slic3r has a mode for SLA resin printers. These operate by creating a series of images for a screen/ projector to expose. See if you can get the pictures out individually.

However, it occurs to me that you would want dimensionally accurate vectors. Check out kiri:moto

From kiri:

Laser mode will intelligently slice a 3D model and layout the cross sections for export to DXF or SVG.

Then you can import the vectors into LightBurn, and do with them as you wish.

@LightBurn
I created a Cura profile which gets rid of all the 3D settings needed for 3D printing and made it more suitable for laser cutting.

Here you can see the the profile does not fill in-between the outer and inner shells, the layers are 4mm apart, and no infill. the lines are 100micron wide and i have exported 1 layer to show how easy the process is - just load the profile, load STL, generate gcode, i edited the file and extracted only one layer (layer 28 in this exp) and re-imported to Cura’s gcode parser. I believe this means that it should be fairly easy to add this feature to LB.

This is the model with my laser profile:


this is the extracted layer:


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