Print and cut diagnosis

nelsonmay · July 29, 2026, 6:34pm

I had trouble with my first print and cut yesterday. It didn’t work. I am at a makerspace on a thunder 100w with a windows computer connected. I work at home on Mac Osx.

I went to the upper left and selected my crosshair. I didn’t use the wizard so I selected it as the starting point. I did the same with my lower right crosshair. Our machine didn’t automatically select absolute coordinates. When I sent the file to the Thunder and started my job, it started trying to burn the upper left crosshair. It wasn’t even on my baltic birch. It’s like it tried to go back to the 0,0 point and burn the crosshair.

I tried again and this time I set an origin point. Same issue. As I watched more post videos, I may not have selected the things I wanted to burn.

I am using this pattern to burn the reverse side of objects. Here is a screenshot. We also don’t have the latest version of LB on the makerspace computer.

Thoughts? I have to be missing something very simple. People have used cut and print on this machine before without incident.

ednisley · July 29, 2026, 7:29pm

Everyone does! Welcome to the club.

The LightBurn crosshairs must correspond to physical positions on the material, so that LightBurn knows how to adjust the layout coordinates.

You must:

Set LightBurn to Absolute Coordinates mode
Jog the laser to a (typically printed) mark on the material
Select the corresponding target in the LightBurn layout
Designate it as one of the Print and Cut targets
Do that for the other mark / target
Activate Print and Cut

Review the process in the doc, because it covers all the details:

The picture shows Cut Selected Graphics is Off, which means the job will contain everything in the layout, including the target markers.

Turn that switch On, select only the stuff you want burned, then Fire The Laser.

A picture of the pattern printed on the material you’re trying to align will show us what you’re working with. Also, if at all possible, use screenshots rather than (fuzzy / Moiré patterned) phone pictures.

nelsonmay · July 31, 2026, 1:04pm

Thanks you guys. I got it to work. A guy at our maker space told me about hiding the targets. (like you said) He said the videos and documentation don’t say this very clearly.

ednisley · July 31, 2026, 1:22pm

If they’re on a Tool Layer, they’re hidden in plain sight.

Putting your favorite targets in the Art Library makes them readily available:

Fire The Laser!

nelsonmay · August 1, 2026, 9:11pm

This is a pro bono project and I can actually send files and show it. I can get print and cut to work, but the laser is burning the reverse side of my rulers darker. It is also cutting the text “uncentered”.

This is how the cut looks on the front of the ruler with is normal. See heavy burn back of ruler.jpeg vs front of ruler.jpeg My laser is focused correct for both operations. The only error I can think of is that when I finished my laser time (at a maker space) and as I was cleaning the lens, it was loose and vibrated. I tightened it up, but can’t cut again until tomorrow night. I also changed my speed/power from 1000/8 to 3000/7. I didn’t see much difference. You can also see that in the screenshot and my file.

To try to solve the off center problem, I shifted my file up, see file. But some rulers were burned higher, but one was burned normally. I shifted/move them up as a group.

either the maker space laser is doing this or it is something I am doing. I don’t know if I accidentally bumped my cut lines (red) layer and moved them? I can’t tell until I can get back on the laser and burn on a piece of cardboard.

Anyway, this is the best I can describe the issue. I laser is “spot on” my marks. I also used the wizard, but used "align outputs scaled. My burned file should be burned exactly the way the measurements say in my file.

24 x 36 inch template_backup.lbrn2 (3.7 MB)

ednisley · August 1, 2026, 11:40pm

The diagonal line sticking out of the target makes it asymmetric:

Per the Print and Cut doc:

Output is aligned relative to the center of the object or Group used as a registration mark.

Get rid of the diagonal line.

Even if you fix the targets, Print and Cut is the wrong hammer for what you’re doing.

A fixture to hold the blanks at precise locations, with the fixture precisely aligned to the platform, eliminates all the errors from trying to align things on the fly. Because the cats aren’t symmetric top-to-bottom, make the fixture with rectangular cutouts wide enough to hold the blanks in either orientation, aligned on their rectangular end opposite the cats (or soccer balls or whatever).

Then:

Cut a stack of blanks from plywood, packing them tightly to reduce waste
Set up / align the fixture
Drop blanks into fixture
Push them to align their rectangular end
Burn front side
Flip them over
Push them to align their rectangular end
Burn the back side
Profit!

This takes a bit of planning to get everything laid out properly, but it eliminates all the error-prone fiddling at the laser.

The two sides probably have different characteristics, even if they’re “the same wood”. As a quick test, run identical Material Test patterns on both sides of one sheet.

That will ruin the focus and exact positioning, as well as blur the patterns. Make sure the machine is solid before you start the next time!

If the speeds are in mm/s (typical for big CO₂ machines), then the machine was not traveling more than maybe 500 mm/s (again, typical) in either case.

You can set any speed you want in LightBurn, but the machine controller will limit the actual speed according to its configuration settings. Given that the controller configuration speed limit is much lower than your settings, the actual speed didn’t change at all.

For millimeter-size shapes like text, the actual speed will be much much much slower than you set, because the machine cannot accelerate to high speeds in short distances. You will get better results by “engraving” the designs as an image, because raster scanning runs at a much higher and well-controlled speed.

And it will be, but the challenge is to align the material and the pattern as you expect, then ensure the cut settings match the machine’s capabilities.

Fix the problems with the targets, speeds, hardware, and layout, then see if the situation improves.

nelsonmay · August 2, 2026, 3:18am

Thanks very much. I’m gonna give this a shot. I’ll let you know how things work.

nelsonmay · August 2, 2026, 8:58pm

Hi Ed,

From what I understand is that I need to create this “template”, I need to cut blanks the size of the ruler, drop them in and force them: let’s say to the left. Then I do print and cut, burn the front, turn it over and urn the back? I took out the diagonal line from the blank. I have to work on the rest of the info you gave me.

Thanks.

sample template.lbrn2 (1.0 MB)

ednisley · August 3, 2026, 12:17am

You have the general idea, so here’s a quick-and-dirty runthough on cardboard.

One complexity is converting the scales / text / pictures from LightBurn’s vectors to a raster PNG file for engraving. I made a bank shot off Inkscape:

Export the LightBurn text as an SVG
Load SVG in Inkscape
Select everything
Set color to black
Set stroke width to 0.2 mm, roughly the laser spot size
Export as PNG at 300 DPI
Import into LightBurn

The next time around, you can do the layout in a graphics program (I’d use GIMP) to get a PNG file directly without hocus-pocus. It’ll be about as fussy as laying it out in LightBurn, just differently fussy.

The PNG files look like this:

For the ruler outline, the cat’s outer edge had several disconnected curves. Select all the red outline parts and apply Auto Join Selected Shapes.

Align the image of the front engraving in that outline, group outline & image, then make a Grid Array with a little bit of space between them to make bigger wood scraps for the “next time” box:

Fire The Laser to get the front pieces:

Cut the fixture as you showed:

Now the magic happens.

Duplicate the fixture layout and put the whole thing on a Tool layer so it won’t make a mark:

The blue layout is the template for your layout. It exactly matches the fixture layout you just burned, so you’ll get perfect alignment by aligning the fixture to the template (which is what I show here) or the template to the fixture (which is what Print and Cut does).

Duplicate and align the back side images on the right side of the fixture pockets:

Let’s suppose you took the fixture out of the laser and must realign it: you do not need Print and Cut!

Move the whole template with the back side images onto the LightBurn workspace:

Then:

Slap the fixture on the platform
Hold it down with a few magnets (assuming a steel honeycomb)
Focus the laser on the fixture surface
Click Position Laser in LightBurn
Click the upper left target in LightBurn to move the laser to its center
Skootch the fixture to put its upper left target exactly under the red dot:

Click the lower right target in LightBurn
Skootch the fixture to put its lower right target exactly under the red dot:

Recheck the upper-left target to be sure it’s still aligned
Iterate until you’re happy
Load a bunch of face-down rulers, pushed over to the right side of their pockets:

Focus the laser on the rulers if they’re a different thickness than the fixture
Select all the back side images you want to burn
Fire The Laser:

They’ll look better in real wood:

As with so many things, the more you do it, the less it hurts …

nelsonmay · August 3, 2026, 12:32am

Thanks so much for running this through on your machine and showing me how to perfect it. I will give it a try tomorrow evening as I have machine time at the maker space.

nelsonmay · August 3, 2026, 4:22pm

I think I forgot to ad this information or forgot to ask. While I set up print and cut, do I:

Align outputs scaled? OR
Align output no scaling?

Thanks.

ednisley · August 3, 2026, 5:51pm

If you insist on using PnC, then you do not need scaling: the targets will be at exactly the same positions in both the LightBurn design and the material on the platform, because you’re burning the targets as part of the process.

Which is why I showed you do not need PnC to align them. Just skootch the fixture’s burned targets to match the design targets and move on.

The scaled option comes into play when you must fit the LightBurn design to printed material from a laser or inkjet printer producing slightly different scaling. In effect, LightBurn will squish or stretch the design to match the physical layout.