Suppose I have a vector logo like this:
If I import this into LightBurn, the colors are interpreted as layer identifiers and the different colored shapes become different layers:
Can I instead have LightBurn treat the whole thing as a single image so that the colors simply become shades, like it would if it was a pixel image?
Or do I have to convert it to an actual pixel image? I’d like to avoid that because it would require me to deal with laser and dither DPI.
In short, no.
To do what you’re asking, yes.
Can you elaborate on this? Not following what you mean by “laser” in this and dither DPI.
Also, can you explain what you’re trying to accomplish overall? May provide room for some other options.
Assuming it’s focused my laser has a resolution of about 318 DPI. So my pixel image would have to have that same resolution? Or does it need to be higher for dithering to work in full resolution? If it’s higher, I’d most likely need to stick to integer multiples of the laser’s resolution to avoid aliasing effects.
Just trying to engrave a logo that contains different shades of gray. Turns out it’s not that easy. I just realized that even if I configured the different layers with different powers, one for each shade, the areas where two rectangles overlap would be engraved twice, once with each power setting, which obviously wouldn’t give the result I’m expecting.
LightBurn can scale for you and adjust DPI. However, if you don’t want LightBurn to do this you can select “Passthrough” and LightBurn will pass the pre-processed image to the laser.
You could potentially design each shade of color as its own shape, so not complete squares. This is readiliy accomplished using the Boolean Tools. Then each shade could be assigned to a layer where you could use various techniques to get you the darkness that you want. There’s really not much ability to “dither” a vector shape, however, so you’d be limited to power, dpi, crosshatch, etc. to simulate colors that way.
I do this on slate by putting everything on the same layer and using power scale. This brings it’s own complications, but it burns MUCH faster than I’ve been able to manage when using multiple layers (one for each power).
I think that’s exactly what I want to do. How are you doing it?
Power scale can be applied to each shape through Shape Properties tab. This only allows for control of a single variable, however.
It’s also not obvious what’s affecting power by just looking at the design.
Does it allow one shape to partially cover another without engraving the overlap twice?
I ran a number of material tests and determined a single speed at which I could produce all desired shades. It was not a linear power response, but I had the material test to reference for the needed power. Otherwise, the only design alteration required (other than the power scaling) was to ensure each shape was separated by a small gap. Even .01mm was enough. Any line overlap produced unpredictable (and not shown in preview) burn results. I use “shade according to power” in preview to both visualize and confirm proper application of power scales to each shape.
Most of my editing is done with multiple layers for ease of selection. Power Scale can be applied at this point. Once I get the design to a final draft state, I’ll select all and collapse into a single layer for burning.
No. My method is far more complicated than conventional layer usage. However, it allows me to run grayscale designs using vector shapes without having to run the layers individually. This speeds up the burn time. For me, this typically means about a 4x reduction (4 shades in a single pass rather than 4 separate passes.). It takes longer on the front end, but I make it up during the burn.
It’s probably only reasonable to use for items that will repeated many times. Spending an extra hour or two (or ten) in the design phase to save an hour or two during a one-off burn doesn’t make sense. Do the same burn 10 times, tho, and your net savings is huge.
No. But why is this a concern? It’s trivially solved by avoiding the overlap.
Ah, that’s the intention. Yeah, unfortunately that’s different from my use case. I pretty much only run one-off items and was looking for a way to quickly engrave vector images without a lot of preprocessing.
That really depends on the image. For example in this image it would take an hour to manually boolean subtract every overlapping shape from every underlying shape:
I didn’t realize you were looking for a generalized solution.
However, there are tools that will “flatten” vector images so that there is no overlap. In fact, the latest versions of Inkscape have a feature that does this such that the shapes are not stacked. You may want to check it out.
If you are indeed starting from vector that may be the way to go. The tiger design I’d argue might be done better going to raster, however.
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