Original subtitles

hey thanks for stopping by

before we get started today i just

wanted to take a few minutes and thank

everybody

for subscribing to my channel we just

passed our 1000 subscription

i'm so excited for the content that i'm

going to create in 2021

so stick around and let's see what we've

got going today

so what are we going to cover today if

you're brand new to lasers

and you're brand new to light burn this

is a video for you

what i've done is i've used a laser for

about a year now

i've used a light burn for about a year

now and what i did is i kind of looked

back

on the things that i use on a continual

basis

and we're going to cover those in some

tips and tricks today

so stay tuned let's check it out okay

i'm going to show you a number of tips

that you'll be able to use just about on

every project you

do in light burn i find myself using

most all of these

most of the time if you learn these and

understand

why you would want to use them it will

save you quite a bit of time

so the first thing the tip number one

will be

if you have a a mouse and it's got a

scroll wheel

on the top of the mouse that's

a great way to move around your canvas

if i use the scroll mouse and roll it

forward or backwards

you can see that i can zoom into places

and zoom out

i can hold the scroll mouse

uh wheel down and pan

and it's just a lot quicker way to move

around it'll be a great way for you to

start getting around your

design space in lipo tip number two

is going to be especially when you're

starting off the thing that you want to

always want to do

is create a boundary for your project

let's say that you were going to want to

engrave

on a small coaster

a small slate coaster and you wanted to

do a fairly simple

uh design and you wanted that design to

be right in the middle of the

of the coaster that you purchased the

way you would do that

is you would come over here grab your

rectangle tool

hold your left mouse button down pull it

out let it go

i don't worry too much about what size

it is because one of the things that

you'll be able to do

a lot is come up here and dial in

exactly what your width

and your height of your coaster is going

to be i measured my coaster with a

little

caliper and it's 3.94

and 3.94

you might wonder well gee why didn't we

just round it off to four inches

and the reason why we want this frame

that we're going to start working on

with our design

it needs to be as accurate as it can be

and the reason i say that is we're

actually going to use this

frame to actually outline the coaster to

make sure that we're

that the slate coaster is in the bed of

the laser correctly

so you can get this design that you're

going to put in here

exactly where you want it so

this tip i use i use frames on just

about everything i do

whether it's a wood picture a coaster

a cutting board it just doesn't matter

the first thing that i do

is i measure up the extents of my

project

or even if it's just a big piece of wood

and i'm going to be doing a number of

things on

that piece of wood i will make a frame

that's the dimensions of that wood and

then work within that

and you'll see when we get to the laser

portion of these tips

how valuable that is so just keep in

mind

always build yourself a frame and then

work within your framework for your

design

now that we've got our rectangle all set

up for our

coaster we're going to need a design to

bring in

and place in the middle of this coaster

you'll notice i've got an art library

down here i will go ahead

and put a link to how you generate one

of these art libraries up above

and this is a a tool that i use a lot

that we won't get into today

but look at that video and you can see

how uh helpful these can be so what i'm

going to do is i'm going to just

drag in a design

and i'm going to hold the control button

down and just blow this

up a little bit and i'm going to drag it

in the middle of that coaster

and you can see now that we have two

different layer colors

one of the things that confused me or

that i struggled with a little bit when

i started with light burn

is how these colored layers work

and what they mean and how they function

and so i'm going to spend

a few minutes on

kind of how all this works so this would

definitely be

tip number three is learning how to

navigate your cut and layers panel

okay you notice since i uh generated and

drag in

another layer uh we've got two different

colors here

and uh the thing that you want to

remember

about light burn is each color will do

a very specific thing um

and so depending on what you want to do

in this particular case

this layer the black layer is just

the representation of the outline of

the slate coaster that we're going to

use

the blue layer uh

shows that uh we're gonna engrave

something in the middle of this coaster

and i'm gonna show you how to assign

these colors

and a couple of things that you you need

to know about this

uh cut layers panel

so let's talk a little bit about kind of

what these are and how these functions

the first thing that i will tell you is

you have you can

drag this out so you can see these

the first thing that i will tell you is

when i started to use light burn the

first thing i would do

is i would come in here you can read it

you can rename your layers but one of

the things that you always want to

remember

is whatever you name this layer it's

going to be that

for all the

future projects so you want to keep your

naming conventions

for your layers at a fairly high level

so what i would do is i would normally

name my black layer as frame because i

always have a frame on every project

and you'll notice now it says frame and

then down here

i would come in and it would probably

say o2 or

o1 like it does here and i would change

it to okay from now on

the blue layer is going to be my engrave

layer

okay so just remember that whatever you

put in here for

descriptions and modes and settings

if we save this layer and then we go to

a new project

and you use the black layer and the blue

layer

it's going to be identical and you'll

have to come in here and change these

speeds and

and settings so just know that that your

layers

are kind of set and so my suggestion

would be

is that you have one for your frame

layer one for your engraved layer one

for your cut layer

and so on and then you can decide on how

many different types of layers you want

with

different settings that's kind of a

personal preference

so know that you can name these

know that whatever you name these and

whatever

speeds you select these for

uh will remain when you select that

layer

on a future project so they're not

independent

they won't change any uh of the projects

that you've got

named prior to this but just keep that

in mind

this setting here the first number is

the speed

and on how fast the laser head is going

to travel

and the second reading is the percentage

of power

that you've assigned to that particular

layer

then output means that we're going to

actually output that to the laser that

the laser is going to do something with

it if i turn it

off you'll notice that it's still

evident but it dulls

the color out and if i turn it off

it disappears now it's still there it's

just

out of view so usually

the way i set my frame up is i

turn the output off at least for right

now

and then um you know all of the rest of

my layers will be on

okay if i double click this

you can open this layer and you can

change your name here you can put in

your speed

your power we're not getting get into

all these different settings

that's for another time but this is just

some basic information

on the cut layers tab okay you'll also

be able to switch from one layer to

another as far as your settings are

concerned

by this little tab down here you don't

have to go back and forth you can just

change

things here there's some buttons down

here that we're not going to talk about

just yet

so the name of your layer

the mode the speed and how fast your

laser is going to travel

the power that you're assigning for that

particular layer

and the other thing that you'll keep in

mind is

the way you have the layers stack is

exactly the way the laser is going to

cut it

so now that you've got your layer your

two layers here

named at a high level the next

um is mode i will go ahead

and link a video up top here

to a video that i did that just

involves what these different features

mean

once you understand what the line

command the fill command

the fill plus line command is

uh it'll make a lot more sense to you on

how this functions

and so please take a look at that video

it will demystify kind of

what you're seeing here one of the first

things that

i noticed when i was starting to use

light burn is

when i opened this up i saw that there

was no cut

mode well that's because a cut mode is

just basically a line commode

excuse me a line mode uh with a lot more

power associated with it and that video

that's linked above there um we'll we'll

talk about that

so uh take a look at that video

these are fairly straightforward once

you understand how they function

check that out this

next section is for speed and power

the first one is the speed that your

laser is traveling and the percentage of

power

that you're assigning to this particular

laser now

what's nice about what thunder laser

does

is they actually provide a material

library

for each particular laser that that they

sell

and so this is for my thunder 60 watt

and if you uh come down here to plywood

and you were looking at eighth inch

they already have one that's

predetermined and so

it gives you a great place to start and

then if i uh

wanted to engrave i just come up here to

plywood no thickness

come over here and um

assign to layer and boom now i'm ready

to go

so um having an art libra excuse me a

material library

is very handy that's how you can get

started in your speed and power

again a lot of these will have to be

tweaked just a little bit

based on your preference but it

gives you a great head start so be sure

you

look at the materials library if you

own and operate a thunder laser

the output is fairly obvious if it's on

that means that the laser will try to

do that function if you turn it off that

means that it still shows it still gives

you an indication

but nothing's going to happen far as a

laser is concerned it's strictly there

for a reference

and then the show button is where it

actually turns it on or turns it off

learning how these cut layers excuse me

cut and layers

panel works is really the heart and soul

of

of your design and how it turns out

so spend a little time with this once

you've done

gone through a couple of projects you'll

see how easy it is to use

the other thing that i will tell you

about the cut and layers panel

is the way your layers are stacked is

exactly the way

it's going to function so if you had

both of these on

um it's going to put a line around the

frame

first and then it's going to engrave the

middle and so

when you get a going on your projects in

some cases

you're going to want to do your engrave

first and then

a cut let's say you were going to cut

this out of a piece of wood or something

like that and you were going to engrave

this

heart and dog print on a piece of wood

you always want to do your engraving

first and then you're

cutting out action after that so

just keep that in mind tip number four

um is to turn your object snaps on

this is really helpful for for beginners

just because it'll take some of the

guesswork

out of centering things and those kind

of things if we come up here

to the little love gears here and we

open it up and we come right down here

to snapping

you've got two options you've got snap

to objects which i almost

always have on and then snap to grid

it just depends on what you're doing you

can have them both on if you like

i find that snap to objects is really

handy

and this is where you would either come

in it come in and turn it on or off so

we're going to turn that

on and watch what happens

if i have this design that i want to put

in the middle of this

frame if i grab this middle handle

and i just start to drag it over kind of

in the middle it automatically snaps to

the middle

of the uh coaster frame

okay tip number five if you're uh

fairly new and i use this all the time

still

um it's called the notes feature and so

if you come up here you've got your file

open

and you say show notes

this dialog box pops up

and what's nice about this especially if

you're doing something

that you haven't done before or maybe

you're dialing in some settings

and you need to remember what you've

done to make it work great

is you go ahead and go ahead and put in

your notes

and it stays with this file the good

thing about this

is now you don't have to put the text on

the workspace you can actually put it

somewhere else where it's not affecting

your design or you don't have to worry

about it

being involved in in your design space

the other thing that's a nice feature is

if for some reason

you forgot or you didn't remember that

you took some notes

you can go ahead and turn this on

and then next time if i save this

file and i reopen the file that

notes section will actually pop up

um

when it opens which is nice so

like in a situation where you're dialing

in a new process

and you haven't done it before but you

finally got it all figured out you've

made your good notes here

um this note feature here is very handy

you can go ahead and record what

what worked what didn't work the

settings that you used the materials

that worked best

and it's all right here tip number six

one of the things about light burn

that's a little bit different from

other graphic programs is that it

doesn't have rulers or

guides that you might be used to on

other programs

and so in order to be able to do certain

layouts that are very specific

in layout parameters

you've got to use rectangles those kind

of things and i like to use these two

layers these are new to light burn

they've only just

added these just in the last couple of

releases but they're really helpful for

this

so let's imagine that this

black line is

18 inches wide by 12 inches high and

let's assume for a minute that it's

either a piece of wood or a cutting

board it really doesn't matter what it

is

but you're going to put some text on

this

cutting board and you want to make sure

that you've got a one inch border

all the way around the inside of this

cutting board okay a couple of things

you can do you could use the offset

feature come in here and offset it to

the inside

by one inch and

there's your guides then you could just

delete it

um that's assuming that you want a you

know a one inch border all the way

around

the other option that i use probably

more often because very rarely are they

the same all the way around

is i like to

start a rectangle

and i'm going to go ahead and turn this

into from an engrave layer the blue

layer i'm just going to make sure that

it's active

and i'm going to go ahead and select one

of the tool layers and you'll notice

that it turns it

orange and you'll also notice that there

is no

settings for this this is just basically

used for text alignment those kind of

things

but let's say that we wanted um an inch

on the top and the bottom and two inches

on the sides

so i'll show you how quick that can be

done so we have our rectangle here

we're going to say uh we're going to

activate it

and then we're going to come up here and

we're going to say give me a one inch

height

and i'm going to duplicate it

and then i'm going to grab one and this

is where if you have your snap to

objects on

which is right here

if you have your snap to objects on this

is where it becomes very handy so

all i got to do is grab anywhere on that

rectangle

and get it close to the other object and

it'll snap right to it now i've got my

guides

for the top and the bottom let's make

the guides for

the sides so i'll go ahead and duplicate

that i'm going to just bring it down

here

and i'm going to hit one of the things

uh

that you'll want to learn is if you if

you learned how to use a rotate tool

it's just the period

key and that'll rotate that around

okay and let's say that i snap that over

to here

and i can shorten it up if we want

and this we want to make two inches wide

and we snap that right to there and i'm

going to duplicate that

grab that and pull it over here

so now we've got all of our guides that

we need for our layout

so the parameters were that we wanted at

one inch off the top

one inch off the bottom and two inches

off the sides

so now if we had some text that we were

going to drop in here

we select it and drag it in

we can actually come up here and we can

snap it right to that line

we can drag this over here

drag this over here

got that done

using the scroll wheel again i'm going

to snap it to this line

then we're going to come up here and

we're going to go ahead and snap it

right there in that corner

there this over here

stretch this over here

and there we have it so now

this just gives you a simple example of

how you can use

these tool layers

as guides rectangles basically that are

predetermined in size and that will snap

to other objects

where you can use those for layout

rulers or layout guides

and you don't ever have to worry about

they'll never be output to your laser

tip number seven

one of the things other than learning

your cuts and layers palette

one of the other things that you're

going to have to set for your laser to

function

properly is this start from drop down

box

i will put a link up top so you can go

to the

video that i've already done on these

settings absolute coordinates current

position

user origin

all three of them have their place but

in all honesty

i like the user origin the best

primarily because i can drive the laser

head to wherever i want it to be

in the uh in whatever position

i want it to be hit the origin button on

the controller

and uh with that

i know that that laser is going to start

in that green box wherever it's

illustrated so

in my mind it's a lot more user friendly

uh

your the laser is not dictating

to you where it's doing its work you're

dictating to it where you want it to

work so

take a look at the uh the video that's

attached

and it'll go over all three

um start from features absolute

coordinates

user origin and uh current position

okay we're going to go ahead and take

this four inch coaster and we're going

to go ahead and place it on our bed it

really doesn't matter where it is

because we're going to drive the laser

head to where we want to work

not where the laser dictates we need to

work so what we'll do

is i'll use the left and right arrows

the up and down arrows on the rubida

controller

and we'll just go right arrow and then

down arrow

and we'll just get this in the ballpark

you can see the little red dot pointer

right here

and you know we're going to just start

right there now

what i'm going to do from here is i'm

going to go ahead and push

the origin button on the rubida

controller and that's going to set my

user origin

you want to make sure that you set user

origin in light burn as well

so what i'll do is i'll push the origin

button

that's done and now what we're going to

do is we're going to go

back to light burn and we're going to

select to frame this

uh frame that we did in the software and

that way

we can assure that when this uh

laser nozzle or laser head goes around

it will show us

um if we're square or not and then

from that once we get this uh laid out

and make sure that it's all square

we know that the uh the symbol that

we're going to put in the middle of this

coaster is going to be right in the

middle we don't have to worry about

being

off off center or anything like that so

the next thing is we're going to go back

to light burn

and we're going to use the frame

function to

make sure we've got this coaster where

it needs to be okay so we're getting

ready to frame

our work one thing that we want to do to

to frame our work here is we're going to

take our frame

layer our black layer and turn it on for

just a minute

and we're going to turn off our fill

layer our design

and so it shows that the black or the

frame

is selected and if we want to know what

the laser is going to do remember you

can always use the preview window and i

would highly recommend

that because what you see here is what

you're going to get this is exactly what

we want to happen

is to just have the laser follow

the outline of the coaster and so now

i'm going to come

down here to to the this frame button

and uh when i push this frame button

the uh laser head should follow

the edge of the coaster now if it's a

little bit misaligned you just tweak a

little bit and push the frame button

again and pretty soon after a couple two

or three tries

you've got it right on the money so i'm

going to push the frame button

and it looks like we're in pretty good

shape we uh

we've got it framed up if you need to

make an adjustment

um move your coaster a little bit and

hit this frame button

and it won't take you any time at all to

get this lined up

here's tip number eight if for some

reason the speed

of that laser head is going too fast

for you to determine whether it's where

it needs to be

go to your move tab if you don't see

your move tab

come up here to window and make sure

that your move tab

is selected and then you'll see it if

you go to your move tab

right here under speed this is where you

can change

the framing speed of your laser so you

can see

it's set at 100 millimeters per second

which is pretty fast

it's hard to really see what's going to

happen so let's go ahead

and change this to let's say 25

millimeters per second

and we'll frame it again

and uh see if it makes a difference so

this is at 25 millimeters per second

we're going to frame it again

ah much better you can see that i can

actually see

exactly where that red dot is following

the edges

of that slate coaster

great so tip number eight is you can

change your framing speed right here

make sure you dial it in if you if you

turn it way down for some reason just

remember you need to turn it back up

uh for it to go back to a faster framing

speed tip number nine

is going to be this other frame button

that we have this is called the rubber

band function

um basically what it means is if i

stretched a rubber band

over our design it's gonna basically

trace the outline so let's go to our cut

layers

turn our frame off and our design

on select our design

make sure that's what we're going to get

and now what it's going to do is it's

actually going to trace the extent so if

you actually stretched a rubber band

over this design

that's going to kind of give you the

outline on the

slate coaster so let's do that

so this is a great feature for

unusually shaped designs

where you really can't determine you

know whether it's

centered or not this will give you a lot

better idea than just

a square if i used this

frame button you'll see that it just

traces this square of the outside

extents of our design

compared to this frame button

this framing button is a great feature

if you've if you're putting

something on wood and you need to make

sure that you're missing a knot

or there's something that's critical

with your design

um you can make sure that you miss it

with this frame button so i use both of

these

frame buttons a lot between these two

frame buttons

and you being able to change the speed

of your frame

you'll be able to dial this right in you

shouldn't have any reason why you can't

center a design on your piece of work

okay so we have

our coaster all framed up we're sure

that this

symbol is going to be in the middle of

our coaster so

what we're going to do is we're going to

make sure that we have our frame off

because we don't want the fray

the laser to to do anything far as a

frame is concerned to make sure that our

engrave layer is

on then the next thing that you're

always going to want to do

is preview i would get in the habit of

doing this because you'll be amazed on

how many times you'll catch yourself

um where the laser is going to do

something that you don't expect

so this uh preview button up here is

your friend you want to use it

a lot and so you can see that

um it's basically gonna engrave go back

and forth and engrave this heart and paw

print

that's exactly what we wanted so we're

good there it's gonna take roughly three

minutes to do

uh i've got now one thing that thunder

laser does

uh that i really like is they provide a

library a materials library

uh for many different things but they're

just guidelines one of the things that

you're going to want to do is you're

going to want to

learn how to tweak your settings in the

ruta controller

and i'm going to show you how to do that

today so we're going to just take this

default setting

and we're probably going to need to

adjust it to dial it in

one of the more frustrating things about

a laser

is all materials are just a little bit

different so just because they give you

a starting point for a particular

material doesn't necessarily mean it's

going to

work just the way you want it so

what you'll need to do is learn how to

make adjustments on your ruida

controller

uh on the fly and that's what we're

going to do next

so what we want to do is we've previewed

it we know that uh

we're getting what we expect so i want

to send this file over to the laser

i'm going to come over here and i'm

going to hit send

okay you can name it and now it's

sitting over in the rubida controller

okay once we've sent the file over from

the

light burn we're going to go in here and

say file

and the most recent file should be on

top we're going to say enter to select

that file

our design should show up and then our

speed and

our power should show up as well

and then uh if we wanted to we could

always frame it here

we could push the frame button it does

the same thing as

the one in light burn except the one in

light burn you can control a little bit

easier you can change the

speed of the frame rate a little easier

than you can

from here so i usually frame most of my

projects

via light burn and not here and at this

point if everything else is ready

we're ready to go ahead and push

start

as you can see that it's uh

it's pretty light and so what we're

going to do is i

is i uh hit the pause i'm going to come

up here to max power

and it was set at 15 that's not quite

enough so we're going to come up here to

maybe 18

hit enter and then hit start again

and you can say wow that really made a

big difference

in our

result

pause press again let's try a little bit

higher just for fun

max power 19

enter start

[Music]

max power let's go to 20

enter start

this is a great way to kind of dial in

uh

your material settings what i normally

do is i pick a

speed and leave it alone and then play

with the power and that way you're not

chasing your tail

but you can see these rurita controllers

are very easy to use

one of the biggest mistakes i made

probably for the first four or five

months i owned this laser

is i really didn't do hardly anything in

the controller

once i learned that you could pause it

you could change your max power

really seamlessly

it made me die or it got me to dial in

materials

much much faster

there as you can see

where we started there wasn't nearly

enough power to do this

uh slate coaster well instead of going

back to light burn changing it there

resending it to the

to the uh controller and running it from

there

i just changed it in the controller on

the fly

and then once you found the setting that

worked for your material

just go ahead and change the setting

your power setting

in your file in light burn save it and

you're good to go but you can see

how much difference we went from 15 to

16 to 17 to all the way up to 20

and you can see if we just kept going up

it would start falling apart on us so

just remember don't be afraid

to play with your power on the fly

this is a great way especially if you

try to do pictures or something like

this pictures are tricky

well as you can see if you learn these

top 10 tips

things can get a lot easier for you just

remember that

don't be afraid to explore some options

on your rarita controller

like i said before it probably took me

four or five months before i realized

that once i learned my way around that

controller life got a whole lot easier

and faster for me to dial certain

settings in

one of the things that i hear all the

time is you know what are your settings

well just because my settings work on my

machine

doesn't mean those uh settings will work

on your machine

so you have to have the ability to go

ahead and

kind of adjust on the fly and make it

your own

i hope this information was helpful

thanks so much for stopping by

happy new year have a great day