Setting origin to one shape but cutting/engraving another

LightBurn Software Questions
1

I have a situation where I’m trying to engrave an image onto an existing object (in this case it’s a knife handle scale) and I want to use the object shape as the origin, but to output the image which is larger.

Basically since I can’t get the scale perfectly framed correctly, I have to engrave it with some extra room around it, so I did an offset of a few mm to make a bigger area to engrave then applied the mask. All good.

The issue is that I can’t find a way to use the smaller shape’s origin and output the larger image shape (see my attached image).

lightburn set origin to other shape
lightburn set origin to other shape743×995 64.1 KB

I tried using absolute coordinates so using 0 0 as my origin and having the smaller inner shape at 0, 0, with the large image shape sticking past it but Lightburn won’t let me output it because it goes outside the machine workspace.

Basically I’m looking for an option like “Use selected shape origin”. It would be similar to “cut selected graphics” but instead of being tied to only outputting what you have selected, it will just use the origin of the selected shape, while still outputting whatever layers you have set to be output.

Is there any way to achieve this?
Thanks!

2

I don’t know of any ability to do what you’re asking. Here’s how I would do it. Use absolute coordinates. Make a jig to locate that point of the knife at 20x20 or something like that, whatever is needed to make the entire graphic fit. Then you can burn the entire graphic without it going out of bounds.

2 Likes
3

Thanks, yeah what I ended up doing was importing the image mask shape into my jig design, and using it to find where the origin would be based on the corner of that shape, and just put a tiny circle there to engrave a dot to use as a reference to put the laser on. Worked great, but it is a pain to have to do all that. So, I went to the Lightburn suggested features site and upvoted the user-defined origin posts on there. I’m hoping Oz will find it valuable enough / easy enough to add to a future version.