I drew some stuff in Corel Draw - A label for a plaque to commemorate a lost pet. I exported the drawing to an .svg file. I load it in Luban. It’s the wrong size, but this seems to be a common issue. (It’s waaaaay smaller in Luban.) I resize it in Luban and it looks good. I position it over the camera-grabbed background in the SM. (A350)
I click process, and the image disappears. I figure maybe that’s just what happens. I generate the g-code and load it to the workspace. The workspace shows nothing, really. I can zoom out and I see a giant red dot that gets small as I zoom out. I see green numbers that appear to be one on top of the other and eventually, I see a big green Y.
I set the material thickness, and I click run. The machine seems to start something, but never burns anything. Just moves a few inches and then raises, as if it’s proud of it’s accomplishment.
I had no issue getting it to burn the sample gift box… What do you have to do differently to burn from an .svg file? I am trying to process this as a vector image. It seems if I process as grey-scale, it kind of works.
You need to convert your text to curves or paths or whatever your graphic program calls it.(they all seem to use different nomenclature). Then make sure you export as plain or simple svg. This isn’t an common problem with svg format files.
Okay… That sort of works. I used Inkscape to convert the text to paths… But the larger text was supposed to be filled with a light grey. And that was all lost in the .svg, despite being displayed properly in Inkscape. Luban shows it very differently. (i.e. Instead of an outlined “O” with grey fill in the lines, I get a black “O” with the center filled with grey. Regardless, the SM doesn’t give me any grey. Can you not get the nuance with a vector image?
I expected it to burn as a vector, tracing the lines, but it still burned more like a raster image.
Save as a png if you want gray levels.
Luban is showing the tool path in the 2nd one. You’re seeing how the laser head will travel. The blue is on and the gray is off, but the head is still traveling over that whole area.
Vector doesn’t have any shading. It’s all on for the object. It will do an outline unless fill is turned on. If you want varying shades you can either use grayscale (with png), which it then uses small dots. Or you can break up the graphic into multiple files with varying power levels to create shades:
Here are some bottle openers I just happened to have done:
I understand the blue lines (which is why I specified mid-print)… It was where the grey is that I was questioning. Regardless, if you can’t shade with vector images, it matters not. I do appreciate your helpful responses. I am leaning…
Lightburn has a free trial period. Design, draw, and burn all in 1 program. I’ve been using Snapmakerjs and Luban for a year and it sucks. 2 hours with Lightburn and I was sold.
I’ve never used the camera on the laser. Will have to check it out sometime. It’s easier for me to just input the numbers.
The center of my scrap board is x=124.5, y=95.9 for the CNC and x+118.7, y=95.1 for the laser.
With Fusion360 (CNC) I set the above x, y coordinates as the origin. For Lightburn (laser) I set the machine origin at x=0, y=0; then in Lightburn I make the drawing center at the above coordinates. I can swap heads and everything lines up correctly. I burn first then cut.
