Z-Axis, Pauses, Scripts

[PerkyGermin]

Hello!

• If I mounted a Z-Axis to my laser head, is there a way to tell lightburn to go “down” a bit on each finished round of a cut?

• Is there a way to pause before starting a layer? I have a “manually activated” air assist, and would love it if lightburn just stopped and waited until I started it.

• Is there a way to run some script or program whenever something “interesting” happens in lightburn, so that I could send an e-mail notification to myself? (layer finished, entire project finished, whatever else…)?

Thanks for any help with this!

[berainlb (PY)]

@PerkyGermin

If I mounted a Z-Axis to my laser head, is there a way to tell lightburn to go “down” a bit on each finished round of a cut?

Yes. This is a setting in the cut later properties.

@PerkyGermin

Is there a way to pause before starting a layer? I have a “manually activated” air assist, and would love it if lightburn just stopped and waited until I started it.

No. There are various workarounds and other things discussed on other topics but there’s no direct way to do this.

@PerkyGermin

Is there a way to run some script or program whenever something “interesting” happens in lightburn, so that I could send an e-mail notification to myself? (layer finished, entire project finished, whatever else…)?

No. Not at this time. There is no user accessible API or scripting mechanism available.

[LightBurn (Oz)]

@PerkyGermin

Is there a way to pause before starting a layer? I have a “manually activated” air assist, and would love it if lightburn just stopped and waited until I started it.

Not at the moment, but it’s something I’ve considered adding. We have the ability to pause at the start of each cut on a layer, but not for the whole layer. It would also require that you actually run the job in layer order for it to work as expected.

@PerkyGermin

Is there a way to run some script or program whenever something “interesting” happens in lightburn, so that I could send an e-mail notification to myself? (layer finished, entire project finished, whatever else…)?

There is not, and likely never will be. For one, it’s not possible for LightBurn to know when part of a job running on a DSP laser has completed, and even figuring out if the whole file has completed would require constantly polling the machine.

The bigger issue for me is perfectly reflected in how you worded your question: sending an email notification to yourself on project completion implies that you don’t expect to be anywhere near the laser while it’s running, and we will absolutely never add features that assist in unattended use. The risk of fire is too high, and I have to be able to sleep at night if you burn your house down or hurt someone.

[PerkyGermin]

Thanks for explaining, I never thought of the possible misuses.
I normally do all my engravings first (which may be enhanced by a light air assist), but then I want to turn on full air assist for all the cutting. Maybe you’ll come up with a good idea of how to add this, that’d be great!