So, I had first purchased lightburn and have used it successfully, but for some reason I can’t get my machine (running Marlin TH3d) to talk directly to my laptop which makes things consitently difficult. Happily, it does get along (only)with LaserWeb so here I am.
Still getting familiar and learning the interface but I have two primary questions regarding this specific project effort.
I’m trying to create a laser etched rubber stamp for a QR code. As you can imagine, the code is made up of a matrix of 25 squares. As intended, QR’s are great for print since ink has no problem making a pair of touching corners. CAD programs and software tends to struggle a bit when sketch endpoints are shared by multiple lines. Indeed, I can’t create a feature using this sketch but I can draw it 2D and now have a DXF pulled into LaserWeb.
A QR code stamp result will benefit from having the sharpest possible edges and corners. To that end, my two questions today are: (1) Will LaserWeb know how to cope with this situation when tracing/rastering? So far I’m not seeing a correct preview.
(2) Is the suggested order of operations to first raster the negative space and then trace the outside of lines to get the sharpest possible edges? (or the reverse)
My first attempt ended up with me making a tiny separation between line ends to address (1), but also some unexplained dwell sitiutions where the laser would just hang out at a point for a while until I guess figuring it out and moving on.
I had first exported my dxf will shaded fill but I see that gets lost in tranlsation. How do I define fill areas for this application?
Here is an illustration to put this post & questions in context. Thanks for any help!
The problem you see is because the laser has a kerf (beam with). If you want diagonal corners to touch, then you need to move the cut 1/2 of the beam width outside of the island. Imagine the laser would be a 2mm milling cutter, then you would need to cut 1mm outside of the material that need to stay.
There are functions in LaserWeb to achieve that:
- “Laser Cut Inside” moves the path 1/2 of Laser Diameter inside the object
- “Laser Cut Outside” moves the path outside the object
It depends on your model, which one you need.
There is also the operation “Laser Fill Path” where you can set Line Distance and Margin (from outline).