Hi, I’m new to both Lightburn and laser cutting. I’m using a Sculpfun S9 on a Macbook running Monterey.
I’ve created a jpg file in Affinity Designer, showing a puzzle. I’ve then added the image to Lightburn where I converted it to vector using trace image. This is when I start getting issues. At first glance, all looks great. However, when I start cutting the pieces, my laser cuts some of the lines twice, meaning if I’ve set Lightburn to let’s say make 6 passes for each line, it will make cut 12 passes on several lines.
In “optimization settings” I’ve checked the “remove overlapping lines”. I’ve tried using the “delete duplicates” but it just says I don’t have any duplicates. I’ve tried re-drawing the puzzle in Affinity, making sure there are no overlapping lines, but this seems to have no effect at all. I think the problem is when it converts my image to vector.
If I move a puzzle piece, I can see that the pieces around it are (most of the time) complete, meaning I can see that what looks to be one line is in fact two (one above the other).
As I’m new to this, I can’t figure out how to solve the problem. Is there a way to “flatten” the image, so that overlapping lines become one?
If you traced the image what’s likely happening is that what you think is a single line is in fact 2 lines that traced the outline of the “line” in the image. Zoom in close and you’ll see this.
If you were working in Affinity Designer can you export as SVG or AI instead of going through the process of creating an image and tracing? No need to go through a lossy step in the process since you’re already working with vectors.
Thanks Berainlb. I just tried importing the file as SVG but unless I’m doing something wrong, it appears Lightburn converts the file to image, meaning I still have to trace the image to turn it into a vector file.
