Hi. I recently made a pen plotter. I used a MKS DLC32 board with fluidnc. The servo is made as a virtual stepper motor with fluidnc. Everything works fine. I use the GRBL/GCODE in devices. When i draw lines everything is fine but when i try fill or offset fill the servo doesn’t move up between each line.
With Overscan turned off the path planner knows it can move from one line to the next without turning the laser off. In your case, that means the pen remains down.
Turn that switch on, allow a few percent overscan, and the path planner should turn the laser off at the scan boundaries, which will then raise the pen and the motion to the next line should happen while the pen is up.
You must show pictures of the results: it seems like a great project!
1 Like
Thanks for your answer. I tried your solution but still the same. I’ll post some pics!!!
Take a look at the Preview to verify the “laser head” is moving between the lines outside the scanned area with the laser turned off.
Because the figures are so small and the motions so short, you may need to allow much more overscan to give the pen-lift machinery enough time to raise and lower the pen.
If you’re using the Z offset to drop the pen, that’s the problem - LightBurn only changes the Z between shapes, not between lines in a single scan. It’s intended to be laser software, not plotter or CNC software, so we’d need to know that the pen has to be retracted at the end of each line, and we currently do not know this.
Our upcoming CNC software would actually produce the kind of output you need, because it’s meant for managing a tool that needs to be lifted / lowered, not a laser that can be left at the same height all the time.
1 Like
Ah!
I assumed the laser on-off signal would suffice for pen down-up, surely based on vaguely remembering somebody doing something like that. If that’s not in play here, then what I suggested definitely won’t work. 
I’m basing my assumption off the fact that his screen shot shows a Z-offset on his fill layer. With Line layers, and Z optimization off, it’ll lower / lift with each shape. With a Fill, if set to Fill Shapes Individually, it will also lower and lift with each shape, but not within the shape, so the holes in letters, or gaps between the vertical parts of M and W, would still be filled.
Ok, thank you all for the help. I think this is the issue as the software is for lasers. I tried the overscan with 10% but nothing not mentioning that the shape became much larger. I’ll use it as it is until the update. Besides this was a project I did with my younger son just for fun. Again thanks for your interest.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.