Set up my laser today

LightBurn Software Questions
1

OK it’s been very busy for my business for the past month. Huge volume. I didn’t get a chance to set up my laser until today. It’s done, it’s set up, and I Identified it in Lightburn. I got that far.

I am using it to burn equipment lables for machines we repair, ya know those labels with company name and phone number. And making keychains we give out to customers. For me to order key chains would have been $700 for 500 keychains, and new equipment stickers cost me $300 for 300 stickers. I can buy 300 “business card” banks for $25 in annodized aluminum, and annodized keychain blanks for about $20. So it’s much cheaper for me to burn my own.

OK, so now with all that BS out of the way. I want to burn/engrave into annodized aluminum. I have a Creality Falcon 2- 40 watt laser. I have 2 questions:

  1. How do I frame the material in Lightburn
  2. what settings should I use to brun

I develop the designs in Corel, export to SVG, import SVG into lightburn. The letters all show up as outlined. WIll this burn just the outline or all the material between the outline?

Sorry about the long post, I wanted to be complete. Better information out front, better answers.

2

I use 10000 mm/sec and 40% power on a 40 watt laser to burn anodized aluminum. Works well. As far your design. Weather it will fill or outline depends on you cut layer setting. Set to Fill or Line. Use the preview to look at your design before cutting

Here’s a jig i made to hold multiple cards for engraving

Make the jig this use it to place your designs

Business Card Jig New.lbrn2 (21.3 KB)

Business Cards Sign Woodworks New Front.lbrn2 (1.4 MB)

Samples
Samples480×640 110 KB

Once you make the Jig. Turn on the 02 Red layer and use that to position it on the honeycomb

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3

That’s rather fast. Did you mean mm/minute?

@JSE Try the suggested settings, or run your own “Laser Tools > Material Test”
Using the included preset “Diode - Engrave test” should cover a useful range to find the perfect settings.

image
image353×159 5.58 KB

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4

As Loren mentioned, this depends on the Layer Mode Line or Fill.

You can also change the View Style to Filled:

5

Finally, this post from Colin is great for batch-engraving with a jig, and Variable Text

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6

Oops! Yes mm per minute. My bad

7

See my design for a jig for business cards i posted above

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8

oh, now I opened the file. That’s neat!

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Thanks,that’s exactly what I am trying to do. I’ll have to look at the software, I’m just learning.

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That’s my plan. I need to figure out what dimensions to do. My footprint is 400x400

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Thanks, appreciate it.

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My burner doesn’t have a camera. I bought it because they were selling cheap. $650 for the 40 watt. Too cheap to pass up. It was on their website for that money. I make custom parts on occasion, I can use it to engrave parts.

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Yes, yes. You don’t need a camera. The linked post describes how to use a Jig instead. That’s way more accurate and reproducible than relying on a camera’s image for placement.

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Yeah, I’m going to make a jig.

15

Stupid question. I purchased 3 different thicknesses of annodized aluminum. Business cards, keychains, and a 12" x 12" scrap piece to practice on. Since they are all different thicknesses, and I’m engraving, not cutting, would the settings be the same for all of them? Can I run a test pattern on one and assume it’s the same for all of them?

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I would think material thickness wouldnt be an issue since your only engraving. But i would still do a test to confirm

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