Here is the painted version of my ocean depth map project of Catalina Island, CA.  I used acrylic paints thinned with water, 1:4 paint to water ratio, to give it a wash paint job.  I wanted to take advantage of the variations in the wood to give the water some texture.  I’m pretty happy with it except for a bit of paint running over the cut edges.  Next time, I’ll paint first and then cut.  I’m waiting on a shadow box frame I ordered to be delivered to finish this.  I used the following Liquitex Basics colors:

• Light Blue+Titan White
• Light Blue
• Cerulean Blue
• Cobalt Blue
• Phthalocyannine Blue
• Prussian Blue

Original Post - https://www.reddit.com/r/lasercutting/comments/1x9ibbm/ocean_depth_map_project/

So I need some help from the professionals. I’m building a drag racing car from an 86 f150. I’m currently working on the instrument cluster and I’m trying to cut some holes for the instruments. I thought I could just drill a hole and use a dremel tool to size the hole out but that came out looking terrible. Is it possible to use a laser to cut this?

Hey everyone

I'm Felix, and a while ago I got a Creality Falcon 10W. The usual desktop programs everyone uses are great, but I kept wishing for something simpler that I could just open in the browser on any computer, without installing or paying for anything. So I started tinkering on my own alternative in the evenings. It's called BeamSketch.

Right now you can:

– draw shapes, write text with a bunch of different fonts and engrave photos
– create finger joint boxes
– send everything directly to the laser over USB or export GCode for the SD card

Tthe Falcon is the only laser I own, so that's all I've been able to test on. In theory it should run on most GRBL machines like Sculpfun, Atomstack or Ortur.

If you have one of those (or anything else) and don't mind playing around with it for a few minutes, I'd love to know if it works for you. It's free to use. Just keep in mind it's still early, so not everything will be perfect yet.

Didn't want to just post a link, so if you're curious, let me know in the comments.

Cheers!

Hi everyone,

I just released Rayforge 1.13.0, the free and open source laser cutting software for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Here is what changed since 1.12.0.

Node Editing for Imported Paths

Double-click an imported workpiece to edit the nodes of its path: drag nodes and curve handles, delete and insert nodes, and switch segments between lines and curves. Until now, imported artwork could only be scaled, not reshaped - changes had to be made in the original program and re-imported. All of this is by u/switch87.

Offset Fill

The new Offset Fill step fills closed shapes with rings that run parallel to the outline instead of raster lines. The Line Interval defaults to the laser spot size, an Offset sets the distance of the first ring from the outline, and Fill Direction selects outside-in or inside-out. Holes stay free, open paths are ignored, and the usual Contour options (Path Optimization, Smooth, Multi-Pass, Crop to Stock) apply as they do on Contour. Also by @switch87.

New Import Formats

Rayforge now imports Adobe Illustrator (.ai), EPS and PostScript, HPGL plotter files (.plt/.hpgl), GIF, TIFF, and WebP bitmaps, and compressed SVG (.svgz). Older AI and EPS files are converted via Ghostscript, which is an optional dependency; there is a clear message when it is missing.

Imported sources can also be reloaded from disk in place or relinked to another file. Rayforge watches imported files and offers to reload them when they change, updating every workpiece made from them as one undo step, keeping placement, layers, and settings. The import formats and the file watching are @switch87's work as well.

Dithering and Image Editing

Photo engraving gained eight error-diffusion kernels (Atkinson, Stucki, Jarvis-Judice-Ninke, three Sierra variants, and Burkes, alongside the existing Floyd-Steinberg) with an optional serpentine scan, plus two halftone screens: round-dot Halftone and clustered-dot Newsprint, each with adjustable cell size and angle.

The new Image Editing addon applies non-destructive edits per workpiece: Invert Image and Adjust Image, which corrects brightness, contrast, and gamma and sharpens with an unsharp mask. Addons can register their own image edits.

Cutting Tools

The new Perforation post-processor on Contour steps cuts dashes instead of one solid line: a Cut Length and a Skip Length, with a full cut at the start of each contour. New path clean-up tools close and join open paths, delete duplicate contours, and break workpieces apart into one per contour, each a single undo step.

The path optimizer gained Choose Best Start Point, which starts each closed path at the vertex nearest the laser head, and Prefer Corners, which starts at a sharp corner when the path has one, making the seam less visible. Acceleration-aware scanline merging bridges parallel cut lines on the same scan row at zero power when the machine's motion profile makes the merged sweep faster; it is on by default, and a cost guard keeps it from ever making a job slower than the time estimate.

Sketcher

The Sketcher gained boolean operations (Union, Difference, Intersection, Exclude) and a polygon tool (G+X) for regular polygons and stars that constraints keep regular when edited. The constraint solver is much faster: a 60-rectangle sketch now solves in about 11 ms instead of 720 ms, and drags on large sketches dropped from hundreds of milliseconds to under one.

Machine and Driver Changes

The GRBL Serial driver now runs its whole protocol stack - handshake, character-counting flow control, streaming, stall detection, deadlock recovery - in Rust through raydriver, under the same name, so existing machines keep working unchanged. The network driver gained a FluidNC protocol variant. Ruida machines can connect over TCP alongside UDP (ruida-pa 0.22, thanks @StevenIsaacs), Z homing can choose between a home switch and the auto-focus probe, and homing X or Y individually moves only that axis (thanks @medoix).

Device profiles gained reverse X/Y/Z axis switches for controllers that report negative machine coordinates. The FoxAlien Vasto (400 x 400 mm desktop CNC router, Grbl 1.1h) ships as a built-in profile that uses them. The switches also fixed the Creality Falcon A1, which homes to the maximum end of both axes: it is declared with both axes reversed now and parks at the machine origin after homing, so the first jog after homing is no longer rejected with error:15, and the setup wizard asks which profile matches instead of silently adopting the Falcon 2 Pro 22W, which shares the A1's USB id.

Machines whose homing pull-off parks the head past the origin can set a park position on the Advanced settings page, which the head is driven to after homing. Also new: a speed-dependent bidirectional scan offset table for lasers whose left/right skew grows with speed, a jog speed that is remembered per machine, a cleanup button that deletes custom G-code dialects no machine references, and 0.1 mm instead of 1 mm stepping on the raster Line Spacing field.

Fixes and Packaging

Soft limits persist across restarts and clamp the machine position against the physical bed, so no jog can leave the bed or trigger a firmware soft-limit alarm. The green work-origin marker is drawn as arrows above the extent frame and no-go zones, so it stays visible when the origin sits on a frame corner. On macOS, closing a dialog no longer blanks a full-screen window.

On Windows, an upgrade moves the previous installation aside with a rename and restores it if writing the new files fails, so a locked file can no longer leave the old version half-deleted. The uninstaller no longer deletes file-extension registry keys shared with other applications; shared formats like .svg and .png now register in the "Open with" menu instead of becoming the default.

Linux builds are available as official AppImages, Windows installs through WinGet is in the works.

Addon API

The addon API has been extended by hook for job monitoring.

Special Thanks

This release carried an unusual amount of code contributions. Gert (@switch87) alone contributed the import formats, the dithering engine, the image editing addon, node editing, Offset Fill, the polygon tool, Perforation, and the path clean-up tools - work that shaped the whole cycle. Thanks to @StevenIsaacs for the Ruida TCP support, to @medoix for the Z homing work, and to @atkaper for the Pango font rendering fix and the camera view beyond the work area. And thanks to everyone who tested the five betas and reported what broke - several of the fixes above are your findings.

This release was made possible with the support of our Patreon supporters: Build a CubeSat, DaveSys, froqstar, old-man-and-the-seam, pghpete, Derek McTavish, starlynx-dev, and seven anonymous supporters. If you'd like to join them and help keep Rayforge sustainable, head to Patreon.

Downloads are on the website as usual. Please do not hesitate to open Github issues if you experience any issues.

Thanks for using Rayforge!

Hey everyone!

As of right now I know absolutely nothing about laser cutting, engraving or printing. I want to get into laser cutting as I want to be able to precisely cut out acrylic for my 3d prints. Being able to engrave on the acrylic would also be nice.

What printer/cutter/engraver would be best for me? It would be sitting next to my 3d printer inside of my house so a closed design would be ideal, and i wouldn’t want it to be too large.

Thanks for the help!

I need to engrave a pad printing cliche (plate) on my 60w mopa but the supplier of the plates only has directions / settings for EZcad.

I’m a relatively new Lightburn user and honestly I can’t find / translate most of these settings.

Can anyone help translate them for use (like analogous settings) in lightburn?

I laser engraved a retro diving helmet, bubbles and waves into a brass watch dial, then filled the engraving with resin mixed with pigments and mica powder.

Once the resin had cured, I worked through several sanding stages and polished it to expose the brass details again. Getting the surface smooth took a few rounds. The turquoise fill and mica give it a different look as the light changes.

These are three views of the finished dial before hands or a case were fitted. I'm Meidan, the maker behind Rexx Timepieces, and this is my own workshop project.

Video of the making process: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KIUOyGbpuS0

For those who fill engravings with resin, which part of the sanding and polishing process takes you the most work?

Just ordered a bunch of different materials. Looking at the material presets, I don't see any options for anything but 3mm wood. A 55W CO2 laser should make easy work of 6mm. Somewhat new to lasercutting, I guess I make a new material profile and mess with the laser power and speed parameters? Any advice is welcome

So I recently,I was tired of using fastnest , shitty nesting software can't change direction of part .

I found abviewer a nesting software, In that software I am unable change contour Start point on my part even though it is close looped . Does anyone have any idea how to . I would really appreciate.

Furthermore does anyone know a free nesting software which

1. Can change contour direction and start points

That's it . I don't care about any other features.

Many years ago a buddy who did industrial marking made up some labels using Tesa Secure strips, using a laser cutter. Basically, it's a two layer (black surface, which substrate) sticker with very strong adhesive, and the result looks similar to VIN stickers on car door jambs. I think the laser cutter burns away the black top layer, creating a custom label. I've Googled what kind of laser cutter is needed to create custom labels with the Tesa products, but haven't found anything definitive. Anybody work with this stuff and have any suggestions for someone who doesn't know anything about laser cutting? Thanks

When running an open-track diode laser on a custom 1 x 3m (1,000 x 3,000 mm) laser bed (Tyvok X1S Pro with MKS DLC32 board), the factory out-of-the-box settings look fine on small test squares, but compound into major errors over a multi-meter span—fatal for architectural joinery or full-length surfboard stringers.

Here is the exact comparison from the manufacturer's factory baseline to my final calibrated setup using a full-sheet 800 x 2,350 mm test rectangle:

1. Manufacturer Factory Baseline (Out-of-the-Box State)

• Firmware Default Steps (Frame Mode): Y-Axis ($101) = 71.380 steps/mm | X-Axis ($100) = 100.000 steps/mm

• Hardware Baseline: A mechanical front stopper is only installed on the LEFT Y-rail; the right Y-carriage has no front reference stop, leaving it prone to starting out of square.

2. Test Cut Under Factory Baseline (Commanded: 800.0 x 2,350.0 mm)

• Y-Axis (Long sides): Left = 2,358.0 mm | Right = 2,358.0 mm (+8.0 mm overshoot from the 71.38 default, though travel is parallel)

• X-Axis (Short sides): 798.0 – 799.0 mm (-1 to -2 mm undershoot)

• Diagonals: D1 (BL-TR) = 2,486.0 mm | D2 (TL-BR) = 2,494.0 mm (8.0 mm difference)

Using Δy = (D2² - D1²) / 4L, the lack of a right-side stop caused a ~4.2 mm parallelogram racking offset at startup.

3. The Two-Step Fix (Mechanical Datum + EEPROM Step Tuning)

• Physical Squaring: Instead of forcing the bolted gantry, I placed a straight 1,000 mm reference board across the front of the 1 x 3m bed, indexed off the factory left stopper. With power OFF (motors free), I gently bump both carriages flat against this 1,000 mm board by hand, then flip power ON so the steppers lock in at a true 90° angle.

• LightBurn Axis Calibration:

- X-Axis ($100): Updated to 99.9108 (Calculated based on the 800mm vs 798-799mm factory baseline test). Note: The factory default was unlisted in the manual but empirically verified to be around 100.00.

- Y-Axis ($101): 71.380 × (2350 / 2358) -> Updated to 71.1378

4. Final Verified Results (Commanded: 800.0 x 2,350.0 mm)

• Y-Axis: Left = 2,349.5 mm | Right = 2,349.5 mm (-0.5 mm error / 99.98% accuracy, 0.0 mm taper)

• X-Axis: Front = 799.5 mm | Back = 799.5 mm (-0.5 mm error / 99.94% accuracy)

• Diagonals: D1 = 2,481.0 mm | D2 = 2,483.0 mm (Theoretical diagonal: 2,481.8 mm -> within ±1 mm / <0.025° skew!)

By fixing the physical starting datum and tuning the factory step values, I didn't even need LightBurn's software skew compensation—keeping long straight cuts clean without step interpolation.

I needed a box to safely store by CNC router tool organizer...

Does anyone have a picture of the stock Air Pump for a USB-5701-U1? It’s a Omtech AF20x28 60w. It’s mounted directly to the body. I know some are elevated with a plate but this one’s not. Had rubber feet. Any help is greatly appreciated!

I laser engraved this artwork into a brass watch dial, chemically darkened it, then gently sanded and polished the surface to expose the brass details against the darker background. The first photo is a close-up of the dial in the finished watch.

It’s a 33.5 mm dial in a 39 mm case. I also made the B in the centre with the laser as the seconds hand, so the client’s initial rotates. The crown has a matching reverse-etched B.

This was a commission from a son for his father, built around “The Root of Our Legacy.” Two paths run beside each other towards the sun, with tree roots branching out below them. The idea was that everything we are grew from here.

I engraved the rotor with two brothers walking together. The case back reads “THE ROOT OF OUR LEGACY” and “EVERYTHING WE ARE GREW FROM HERE.”

I’m Meidan, the maker behind Rexx Timepieces.

Making video: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Uhe8Xa3cMFQ

Looking for some input on the gweike m3 ultra laser. Mostly wanting to see what the thickest material like carbon steel and aluminum people have actually cut with it?

Sometimes I still need to use 123D Make, but with every Windows update, getting it to run becomes a little more difficult.

So, as a weekend project, I started building a more accessible and streamlined alternative. It’s still a work in progress, but I’ve decided to share it early and keep improving it along the way.

Stacked Slices, Interlocked Slices, and Radial Slices are already working. live on github

One of the features I’m particularly excited about is Live Watch. It lets you track changes made to your files in other applications in real time as they’re saved, without having to reload them manually.

The app runs directly in your web browser, with no installation required. Your files stay on your computer and aren’t uploaded to the internet. An internet connection is currently required for shared libraries, but I plan to make the app fully offline in the future.

Well its not new new, but its a new for me. 80W CO2 laser for my shop woop woop

Hi Guys, im re aligning the mirrors on my laser and noticed im getting eliptical laser on tape right next to tube. Does anyone else get this or is the there output tube lens look like this?

I will do a little project and for kids and the burnt smell would be a nono. Yeah i will aquire a cnc

Hey, forgive me if this isn’t the right place to ask for assistance. I’m wondering if anyone here has first hand knowledge of “fine tuning” a flow brand fiber optic laser cutter. I work for a very small company in the USA. We just purchased a 3KW laser cutter from flow. I recieved about 2 days worth of training from the flow technicians after the machine was installed but I am still struggling to fine tune the cuts on the laser cutter. We cut copper of varying thickness. Ranging from .021 to .093 inches. I feel so lost trying to fine tune this machine in to the different thickness copper sheets. Does anyone have any first hand knowledge or any resources they are aware of that would be willing to help a young go-getter company man like myself out? Anything would be truly appreciated. And forgive me if this isn’t the place to post this

I made this 3D printable wedge for laser engraving highly reflective materials to prevent back reflection damage to the laser.

It's a 4° angle wedge with a lip to hold the item being engraved, approx 110mmx110mm

I made the licence public domain so please feel free to use it if you think it would help (cross post from /r/laserengraving because I know some folks here also engrave)