Hallo
I have the following question about drawing in Lightburn. I would like to
draw a rooftile design for laser engraving. Would anyone like to explain to
me the best way to do this in Lightburn. I would like to draw 1 object so
that I can expand it with matrix.
Thanks in advance for the help.
Draw a single tile then use the array tool with zero spacing.
I will use your image as a template and with the standard drawing/construction tools “post-construct” the original. After that, it’s a bit of fine-tuning and using the fantastic grid array tool for the rest.
…isn’t that something you could use?
Tanks for your help I have to look into it to get it right. I have another question. Maby it does not belong in this forum but I have a problem with my laser cutter I have made a test in Lightburn like this
test 001_1.lbrn2 (5,6 KB)
but the result after engraving was this
Can you help me with this what is wrong here.
settings in Lightburn speed 6000 powe 50 % line mode.
speed 6000 is that inches a sec, inches a min, mm/min. mm/sec ? that will make a HUGE difference to the result you are getting.
Thanks for your reply. In settings I have mm /min
Sorry again
I have looked at your file but could not find anything wrong with it. Do you have these problems in general or only with this file?
Thanks for you reply. I got this file from a friend who
made this with 3d program like SketchUp. I have made a
new drawing in Lightburn now and it seems ok. So amby
the other file was not ok.
I have another question. What I want to make is a brick wall
for model houses on my modeltrain layout. I attach a picture
of the engraving with my machine. But this is not wat I want
Between the squares (stones) should be engraved. I want to
paint the wall after drying I paint with water paint grey
colour fi to get the stone grouting grey after light washing
the wall. What I try to reach is that the space between the
stones is engraved.
Is this possible?
Thanks in advance.
Perhaps this discussion will give you some ideas:
Thanks this very helpful
Hi ednisley
I ask my question here because the other topic is closed.
I try to draw the brick wall in Inkscape. But when I export
to png 254 dpi the quality is very poor. When I export with
500 dpi the quality is better but the laser takes very long
time to finish. What is your secret because your Gimp drawing
is so good. I have no experience with Gimp. What I try to
accomplish is 1 brick which I can extend to a complete wall
as the dimensions of every building is different.
How you can help me.
Thanks in advance.
No real secret, just some fiddly details.
I used 254 dpi, because that makes each pixel exactly 0.1 mm wide, which is about the smallest thing my CO₂ laser can draw.
You must use a raster / bitmap graphic editor, because the images are at such a tiny scale. While it may be possible to use Inkscape, it is a vector program and not intended for pixel manipulation, so it will be working against you at every step.
With GIMP (or whatever bitmap program you use) set to 254 dpi = 10 pixel/mm, create a rectangular drawing about the right size for the wall, then zoom in on the workspace until each pixel is a big block:
Each of those red blocks is a single pixel drawn inside the brick. The dotted square in the next block is the “paintbrush” producing the pixels: it is exactly 1 pixel wide and 1 pixel tall.
Draw the black lines to represent the mortar surrounding a single brick: the black mortar is one pixel wide. The white bricks are 10 pixels wide and 5 pixels tall.
Then use copy and paste to duplicate the brick horizontally along a single row. Copy and paste the row, offset by half a brick, upward to form the wall.
There are other ways to build a brick wall, but that gets it done without too much trouble. Once you have a big-enough wall, you can easily copy-and-paste it into a larger area or crop it down to a smaller area.
Save the wall image as PNG to avoid image compression artifacts, then tell LightBurn to simply pass the image directly through to the laser without applying dither or halftoning or anything else.
Practice makes perfect! 
Thanks for your reply and explanation. I think I understand what you mean and I will try this in
Gimp. Hopefully with good results
Thanks again
Thanky for those details! I am struggling with the raster-vector game. Not what it means, just where each is relevant. Your explanation was very informative.
I still have a question. When I make a new document in Gimp in my case 65 x 35 mm
and set it to 254 px/in and I draw a rectangal of 10 x 5 pixels the stones are way to
small. When I draw in a document of 72 px/in it is about the right size. What I’am
doing wrong when I use the 254 dpi document.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Small on the screen in GIMP or small when engraved on the laser?
If it’s on the screen, press Ctrl and roll the mouse wheel to zoom in.
If it’s when engraved, then upload the file here so we can take a look at it.
Remember that the PNG file is exactly what will appear on the engraving, so you must select Pass-Through to prevent LightBurn from trying to dither it.
Both much too small on the screen and also when engraving
on the laser. I use Ctrl and de mouse wheel to zoom in and out.
Enclosed the file.
Thanks in advance.
