I have been using Lightburn and lurking on the forum for just over a year, reading many of the hints and solutions provided by the community. For all of that I thank you.
I now have an issue that I would like some help with. I need a jig that will hold a ring mandrel so I can work on it before inserting the mandrel in my lathe. Its basically a box with a tray attached to the front. Rather than start from scratch I found something close to what I was looking for on boxes.py , used that to generate a lightburn file then edited it to create what I needed. The main part of the edit was to remove the tabs on the diagonal sides, so I created a box, rotated it 45 degrees and used some boolian logic to cut the tabs off.
Great, it all seemed to work fine until I checked it in a Preview. Firstly, there were about 4 dozen unconnected nodes sitting below some pieces. I ungrouped the items, moved the main piece out of the way and deleted the orphaned nodes. I also noticed that the diagonals, while they look fine on the main screen, when viewed in the preview are made of several segments and look ‘saw toothed’. I ungrouped the items and tried to delete the intermediate nodes along the diagonal. Lightburn won’t allow me to smooth this line for some reason.
I have spent way too much time on this so will probably just cut it on the laser and if the diagonal is too rough, I’ll just file it smooth.
But I hate being beaten by a computer!! Has anyone any idea why I can’t delete these nodes?
Not sure exactly what your process was, but you ended up creating some very small odd shapes on the diagonal. You also had boxes.py use small rads, where it is best to set them to 0
Exporting the design as a lbrn2 file (as you did) puts the jawbreaker URL encoding the whole thing into the LightBurn Notes. After a while, when you want to make the same thing, only a little different:
Copy that URL from the Notes
Paste it into the browser
Be delighted to not start from scratch
Tweak that one little thing
Save the new design
Fire The Laser
Setting burn = 0.04 produces a perfect fit in MDF and plywood on my machine. Your value will be different, but finding the right number will prevent forgetting to apply a kerf offset in LightBurn.
Because all the tabs have nicely rounded corners, LightBurn’s Resize Slots tool doesn’t find them. Instead, measure the actual material thickness with a digital caliper, set thickness to that value, and they fit perfectly every time.
I did get the jig sorted today. Thanks for the help. That’s a good tip about the URL, I’ll remember that for next time. I went through each and every parameter in boxes.py and ended up with a much closer export to what I wanted. Almost all the problems were as a result of the looped corners. Now I have the fun of learning how to use the ring mandrel to make a couple of rings for my daughter. She has supplied the rocks, but I have to crush it and superglue it into the ring blank before fitting it to my lathe to finish it off.
