Inverting what is lasered

[chris_harrison]

Hello All,

Im new to using lightburn and was hoping someone could help. i have purchased some aluminium business cards that are pained black and want to create a design on them,

i would like to remove all the paint other than the design ie the design is the paint and the background will be the exposed aluminium.

i have made my design but in its current format if i click on start it will do the oposite (remove the paint ie my design and leave the back ground

can someone please explain how to do this other than creating the image in another program then inverting the image and importing it to lightburn

thanks

Chris

[LightBurn (Oz)]

“… in it’s current format” - what format would that be? If it’s vectors, the answer is different than if it’s an image. For an image, there’s a ‘Negative Image’ button in the layer settings.

For vectors, read here: How do I invert (negate) a vector engraving?

[Stroonzo (Jeff)]

This may help you understand possibly what you can do if you’re dealing with vectors:

When I have these layers set to fill, the machine will laser on the lettering and on the character such as this:

To invert this, understand that, on the same layer, the fill alternates when there is overlap. For example, if I add a box of the same layer around the lettering:

[Bonjour (Bo)]

@chris_harrison

Hello All,

Im new to using lightburn and was hoping someone could help. i have purchased some aluminium business cards that are pained black and want to create a design on them,

i would like to remove all the paint other than the design ie the design is the paint and the background will be the exposed aluminium.

i have made my design but in its current format if i click on start it will do the oposite (remove the paint ie my design and leave the back ground

can someone please explain how to do this other than creating the image in another program then inverting the image and importing it to lightburn

thanks

Chris

If you have a shape delineating the border of the card, make it a different colour and turn the colour off from outputting. The shape will still be recognised for framing, but will be ignored. The filled objects will then fill, rather than being left behind.