Laser newbie here, is it possible ( or wise ) to check your program first by running it with the laser power at zero and watching the movement? Does that actually turn the laser off? My other idea is to run it first on cardboard or poster board before I run the acrylic, does anyone have an idea of reasonable settings for poster board or cardboard? Thanks for any advice.
You can do this. No cost as you are not using the laser tube.
RDWorks also has a great preview feature (the tv monitor in the tool bar) that I recommend always using.
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LightBurn and RDWorks (I strongly prefer the former) allow you to frame your job - that is, make the head outline the perimeter of your job to ensure it will fit on your workpiece. Is that what you’re trying to do? Watching it mock the entire operation is sort of pointless because you aren’t going to learn anything except the extents of your job.
Settings for acrylic are well known and documented by Thunder in their material settings documents.
Are you trying to etch or cut acrylic? Note that extruded acrylic doesn’t etch well but cast acrylic etches beautifully. On the flip side, extruded acrylic cuts with a gorgeous flame-polished edge while cast cuts with a decent, but slightly rougher edge. Neither cuts badly.
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Two things that are wise are to:
(1) run one or more test cuts using a very small test (like a 1" square) to narrow down the power settings
(2) recognize that if you have a large part the power requirement in the right front corner of the cut may be significantly different than the power requirement in the left rear corner. Take this into account when you’re making your test cut(s) above.
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What Chris said on the differences between top left and bottom right. For that reason I set focus in the middle of my anticipated piece (if large) or reset focus as I move across my workpiece and cut parts.
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HI, thanks for your response, can you tell me a little more about light burn? I have having getting rdworks to accept a file from solid works, I can save as a png but then the mode is scan and not cut. I think I may have to use adobe illustrator, but I have not used that before. Thanks in advance
you need to save it as a vector file. Solidworks can output a dxf. That is what you want.
Like John said, a dxf is what you want. Make sure you choose the correct view (left panel after the save as… operation) and remove lines you don’t want to cut (chamfers, construction lines, etc.).
I had no end of trouble importing the resulting DXFs into RDWorks (they’d distort and get all wonky) but LightBurn handled them beautifully.
If you’d like me to step you through it online using TeamViewer, I’d be happy to. Or could show you at the space.
When this happens, I usually open the dxf in inkscape or illustrator and save it there, converting to an AI (illustrator) file. That usually fixes it.
Good to know. I pretty much hate Illustrator and I don’t trust multiple conversion operations. But if I ever have to I’ll remember that.
I just use LightBurn - it’s a joy to use, IMO.
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