A350 laser and Adobe illustrator cut and etch tutorial

[dannysprogis]

Greetings,

I have just connected my laser module to my A350 for the first time and have found the end to end process from Illustrator to laser confusing to use for the first time. I would really appreciate if anyone can point me to some good tutorials to get me started.

Specifically I want to draw a file in Adobe illustrator and export it as an svg file for Luban to interpret and perform both cut AND etch actions into 2mm plywood. It seems that I can only create one toolpath for the svg image within Luban and hence it will only cut OR etch and not do a combination of both.

So I guess my question is: Can and how do I specify cut lines and etch lines within the same Adobe Illustrator drawing (svg) so that Luban can import it correctly and cut/etch in the same file?

Any help or pointers to a good tutorial would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Danny

[sdj544]

In lazer mode, how do tell if your cutting or engraving... read on

I have read through the laser manual a couple of times and maybe I am just not getting it. I’m confused on how the machine gets told whether it is cutting through stock or or merely engraving/burning an image onto the surface. For example, I will be laser engraving an image onto a piece of wood. The wood is 14 mm thick. Although I don’t know why that matters as I only want the image burned into the surface. Is the laser going to burn through the 14mm… or because it is an image file, it knows o…

How to switch between engraving and cutting?

In Luban, how does one determine that an SVG is going to be for cutting and another is only for engraving? I cannot find how to do that, I feel dumb…

[dannysprogis]

Thanks @sdj544,
From what I can read it is not possible to use a single .svg file to define both cut and etch actions for luban.

That really is a bit disappointing.

[sdj544]

It’s not really that big of a deal to save as two separate files and run as one job.

Or you can use Lightburn.

-S

[dannysprogis]

Thanks @sdj544

Does light burn work with Snapmaker? have you had any experience with it?

It seems to be way more complicated than needed if you want the etch and the cuts to line up correctly and to scale? for example, I have multiple files that have already been created that have both cut and etch paths defined in different colors (or different stroke widths) so as I understand I have to edit the .ai files, create multiple .svg files, import them separately, align them and then assign different tool paths to each layer.

Thanks again for the swift reply and advice.

Regards,
Danny

[sdj544]

I don’t use Lightburn personally. Luban does everything I need.
Lightburn and this subject has been discussed many times on this forum.
Try a search.
-S

[dannysprogis]

Will do, thanks for the help.