O DEAR Solid fills

I’m trying to get ‘Filled vectors’ working in Lightburn with Mach4 using GRBL-3 post processor.

The image preview of a simple letter ‘O’ looks good in lightburn and the output gcode is generated…

However on opening the Gcode in Mach4 the screen shows a solid full ‘O’

Can anyone hep please.

Have you tried running the gcode?

Fills in LightBurn are all G1 moves, with only the power value varied, so that the speed is consistent. Constantly switching between rapid moves and feed moves (G0 and G1) would make the preview look better, but can cause wobble in the output.

Hi Oz, yes the Gcode runs fine, however instead of a donut I get a filled letter O. Heres the first bit of my code:-

; LightBurn 0.9.16
; GRBL-M62P20 (1.1e or earlier) device profile, current position
; Bounds: X0 Y0.07 to X12.16 Y13.47
G00 G17 G40 G21 G54
G91
m2003 (LASER_VECTOR_PWM_PERCENTAGE=75)
m2003 (LASER_VECTOR_FREQUENCY=20000)
m2003 (LASER_VECTOR_GATE_DELAY=0.5)
m2003 (LASER_VECTOR_GATE_DURATION=0.5)
m2004 (This will Enable the Vector Laser)
; Scan @ 100 mm/min, 45% power
M8
M63P20
G0X4.98Y0.07
; Layer C00
M62P20
G1X2.18F100S114.8
G1X-2.73Y0.1S0
G1X3.23S114.8
G1X-3.6Y0.1S0
G1X3.94S114.8
G1X-4.23Y0.1S0
G1X4.54S114.8

Those lines are alternating between S0 and S114.8. S0 is “laser power to zero”, and S114.8 is “laser power to 45% (114.8 out of 255)”

It looks like whatever script you’re using to inject the extras is ignoring those.

Looks like we got there at last.

Mach4 and Lightburn GRBL3 Gcode.
After a bit of changes to the GRBL3 Gcode produced by Lightburn I finally achieved the results shown.

GRBL sends ‘S’ to to turn laser on and of.
Any ‘S’ followed by a number’ I.e S57 means turn laser on at 57%. This simply needs replacing with M62P20
An ‘S’ number followed by a 0 means lase off. And needs replacing with M63P20
When you wish to create filled text like the letter ‘O’ shown be sure to tell Lightburn that your text is ‘Line and fill’

Here is a small part of the code I used.
; LightBurn 0.9.16 George’s WIFICARD
; GRBL-M3 (1.1e or earlier) device profile, current position
; Bounds: X0 Y0 to X71.17 Y43
G00 G17 G40 G21 G54
G91
; Image @ 6000 mm/min, 70% power
m2003 (LASER_VECTOR_PWM_PERCENTAGE=75)
m2003 (LASER_VECTOR_FREQUENCY=20000)
m2003 (LASER_VECTOR_GATE_DELAY=0.5)
m2003 (LASER_VECTOR_GATE_DURATION=0.5)
M2004
M62P20 F100.0
T1M06
S200M03 F100
G94 M63P20
M8
M5
G0X4.98Y4.52
; Layer C00
M3
G1X6.1F100M62P20
G1X2.03M63P20
G1X3.56M62P20
G1X5.59M63P20
G1X1.01M62P20
G1X2.03M63P20

I hope this is of some help to others.

George

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