I am very new to using a laser. I have been looking at cutting pieces of foam for tool/object storage or organization. Essentially I want to cut the foam out where the object will end up sitting. My initial thought is to take a picture of the object, import the image, trace it to make the cut path. I did this using a regular picture I had taken but the tracing didn’t come out very good. I had read on an internet post some suggesting using a lightbox when taking the picture to import which I did and got better image to trace. Then the problem I have encountered the cut was the right size. The height was correct, but the width wasn’t wide enough. So, I am trying to figure out how to do this and have accurate sizing. When I resized my image after importing it, I kept the ratios of height and width the same, thinking if I got one right the other should be right, but it didn’t end up that way. What am I doing wrong? Or what should I be doing differently??
Thanks for helping a newbie try to get some understanding!!!
If you must trace, make sure you are set to THRESHOLD under the Adjust Image menu.
-or-
Import a photo, but draw your own outline with the pencil tool.
Don’t forget that lightburn has a measure tool. You can compare the real world tool size to the indicated size in light burn vs. the output from the laser.
I almost always use a cardboard scrap test shapes before I commit to final designs. Amazon boxes are a great source of cheap material.
With all that work, you can make one final check. Measure the length and width of the tool. Then see if that is the measurements of the tool trace in Lightburn. If the length and width are correct, then the rest of the lines and curves will also be correct.