I’m cutting some very small parts on a galvo laser and I’m finding the output resolution of Lightburn is an issue, see below picture. So my core question is, how can I increase the output resolution for these small parts?
The spiral in the editor program looks good (although I do have to scale it up by 10x when exporting the dxf from Solidworks and then scale down by 10x in Lightburn which isn’t ideal but works okay…) but then in the preview you can see the resolution of the lines is very low and looks segmented which leads to a large difference in laser power at the thin sections vs the large sections. This causes uneven widths that I can clearly see in the final part.
Note that the part is only ~1.5mm square and the lines are not simple straight cut lines but actually a flood fill pattern with a small angle increment. It goes very fast and does many passes to spread out the heat evenly so one section doesn’t melt entirely. I use the fill pattern to effectively add thickness to the cut lines so it’s larger than the kerf / beam size of the laser to add more clearance and ensure they fully separate.
Are you certain the issue is in the output? If so, try modifying the “Curve Tolerance” value in Edit->Settings->Import/Export->Output Settings. Reducing the value should increase “correctness”. Try setting to 0.
Also, I’d suggest confirming the issue isn’t on the input side. Is the spiral defined as a curve or as a series of straight line segments?
The Curve Tolerance setting was the correct thing to change, I’ve got it working now thanks a ton!
I had actually tried this earlier but now I see why I was confused. It seems it has a hard lower limit of 0.005 and if you enter anything lower than that (0 included) it will silently reset it back to what it was before. So I had thought I was changing it but it didn’t actually change so I just then incorrectly assumed this was only for exporting from Lightburn to a dxf file or something which seems to be what the other settings are related to on that Import / Export tab.
With the setting at the minimum of 0.005 it gives good results now though so I really appreciate the help! It might be nice if it’s was a bit clearer what the limits of that setting are and what it does but I’m just happy it works.
