I bought an enraver to do some nametags. They only need to be single line of text. nothing complicated. The engraver came with Lightburn as the design software. It looks like some people know how to use Lightburn with a spindle and but i have no idea. please Help 
I don’t either. I use carbide create V6 to generate gcode and then openbuilds control.
LightBurn is not really made for this task. You can mimic some CNC functionality, but it’s not the main target. I also suggest using other tools like Fusion, Estlcam etc. for generating GCode and then use gSender, Universal Gcode Sender, OpenBuilds Control etc. for controlling the CNC.
LightBurn team is working on MillMage, which will be a dedicated CNC version of the software.
While my son [lives far away] is able to use Fusion to create drawings for all of my electronic front panel projects, I have never been able to finish a project using it. Just way too complicated for me. Would love to do it on my own. Browsing the net and discovering Lightburn, I’ve learned to create a text-based layout all by myself. I have a custom cnc router my son helped me construct, and can engrave text into aluminum, making multiple passes by manually adjusting the Z-axis with each pass. The router is so accurate, there is no distortion to the text after the many passes, reaching a sufficient depth for infilling with paint. So… all I would need LB to do different from its original design, would be to find a way to have the spindle (Z) raise and the lower at two preset measurements, when moving from one text letter to the next. Is it too simple to think there might be a way to use the laser on-off commands, as a way to cause the spindle stepper-motor to those two heights needed for plunging up and down? The cnc router employs a Duet3D, which some have said works well with LB. Looking for a workaround until I can purchase “Millmage”.
LightBurn has a z-axis feature which can be used to add a z-axis offset each pass. That would be ok in your case. But it depends on your controller supporting that as well. I only can tell for grbl controllers. Those work.
Each pass across the panel is many different words/text, in different X-Y positions, meaning I need Z to come down, route a text letter, then rise, in order to move to the next X-Y position, and once again lower to repeat the process, until all text letters of the selected layer/pass has been completed. Excited to give any suggestion a try. Thanks for your advice, Sir.
I think your best option is generate gcode and toolpaths and control in another program. You can do the CAD in Lightburn.
That’s not possible with LightBurn, I think. But you can still prepare your SVG/DXF graphics in LightBurn and then use another tool (e.g. Estlcam) to create the tool paths.
This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.