I’m using lightburn to cut complex shapes in 3/8 balsa. I’m doing multiple passes. Light burn cuts the same tiny segment over and over setting things on fire. It would be much better if it could go around the outline 5 times than to cut one tiny area 5 times and doing the next. How do I change this .
Assuming the segments are part of a complex shape that you want cut I’d suspect that they might not be connected. It’s pretty easy to assume that line segments are connected when they’re not as the difference isn’t obvious. Have you checked the shapes using node editor? You may need to zoom in on the nodes quite a lot to see if they actually are connected.
Check this topic.
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At least here, the cut proceeds smoothly around the entire perimeter, so it’s not clear which tiny segments you’re describing.
Assuming the SVG represents the actual size of the part, you can’t cut it from 3/8 inch balsa without careful thermal control.
The part is 1.8 mm wide with some sections under 1.5 mm. Cutting that from 3/8 inch = 9.5 mm balsa means it’s 5 times thicker than it is wide.
The kerf will be about 0.2 mm wide, so the cut has an aspect ratio of nearly 50:1.
Balsa wood is a great insulator, which means the heat from the cut isn’t going anywhere. The part gets heated from both sides, the cuts isolate it from the bulk of the material, and the cut’s tall side walls absorb all the heat from the laser beam hitting the bottom.
This will require long pauses between passes while the heat dissipates.
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I’ve had this issue with importing SVGs created in Fusion360. While the part I was making looked like a single line, it was actually multiple smaller line segments. Make sure the part you are importing is a single line by clicking different areas and moving them around in lightburn.
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