LightBurn for Beginners Manual

THE SPEED AND POWER NUMBERS YOUR LASER DIDN'T COME WITH

Did your laser show up with zero recommended settings?

Does it keep running into the rails, or burning in the wrong corner?

Do the videos move so fast you pause them every ten seconds?

If you're about to give up, hold on. You're not doing it wrong. LightBurn has a lot of buttons, and most help skips the part where you start. This book starts there. One screen at a time, in plain words.

• Starting speed and power for wood, acrylic, leather, slate and more, for diode and CO2 lasers, plus the one label to check before you type a single number.
• Why a burn lands in the wrong place, and the one setting behind most of it.
• Your first coaster, with a dry run first, so your first burn lands where you meant it to.
• A quick way to tell a software problem from a machine problem, before you change another setting.
• What to do when it won't connect, or shows ALARM:9 or error:20, looked up by the exact words on your screen.
• Photos that come out right, and Christmas projects: names from a list, coasters in a batch, a tumbler on a rotary.

Not a computer person?

Good. The steps are numbered. Every button comes with where it sits on the screen, and big screenshots from LightBurn 2.1 show you what you should see. Own an xTool, an Ortur, a Sculpfun, an Atomstack or a Ruida CO2? A short note tells you when your machine does it differently.

Three printable cards come with it

A Starting Settings Card, a Positioning Cheat Sheet and an It Won't Work Quick-Fix Card. Print them and pin them by your laser.

This is an unofficial guide, not made by LightBurn Software. It won't make every burn perfect. It will get you from stuck to burning, and show you how to find your own numbers after that.

If you want your laser to finally burn what you drew, start here.