Im sure this has been covered at least once. But Im unable to find anything specific to this end.
I am making christmas gifts. Engraving US State shaped cutting boards and other oddly shaped items. Can I, using lightburn, create a set of nodes for x/y positions of the laser, that I can later trace out to make the shape of the item in the engraver in its current position? This way I can utilize every square inch available of the piece being engraved.
I’d be interested to know if lightburn has any feature that can do this? or if there is a fairly non-painful way to do this.
Im referring to having say a piece of wood that is irregular in shape. And being able to:
for instance use the tool layer, to create a boundary that represents the work piece, by moving the laser to each point along its perimeter, record that spot and repeat. In the end link all the points as a reference boundary that can be used for tight fitting engravings to the shape.
Once the individual points are connected it would make a frame you could work in that fits the item shape and size.
Take a strait on picture of the shape on a white background. Bring that into lightburn and trace it. Should give you a very good idea if you measure and scale to the right size.
If you’ve got a scanner, you can do that directly by capturing an image, blowing out the contrast, making a binary mask, then using LightBurn to automagically trace it into a vector outline. You could do it with a camera photo taken from directly overhead, although you must force the proper size by hand.
If lightburn had that option, it would still be faster with a pic and trace.
To line up all the points and have them create a shape would take a while.
Make sure aspect ratio is locked and measure the width and adjust.
Put a camera on your machine… that’s how it’s designed… lay the board on the table and the camera image is used as a background… perfect placement and size positioning…
