Two Ways to Outline Text in Lightburn

Let’s talk about how to create an outline around text using Lightburn. There are two ways that we can do this. There may be more but I am going to go through two of them.

Watch the video below or scroll down

The first thing we need to do is write our text, so let’s select the Text Tool

Then click on the screen and type out your text. I’m just going to type out the word Welcome.

Script fonts are the best type of fonts for this as the letters flow together and join.

When I click on the Select Tool now you can see how all the letters are joined.

If the letters are not joining for you it could be that you’ve got welded unselected.

Once you select Welded the letters with show show as joined.

Now you can changes to the text. You can drag it out make it thicker or you can make it bold or unbolded. So this this is the time to make any changes you want.

The next thing we want to do is create an offset. So while the word is selected
come over to the Offset Tool and click it.

You you can see how it’s already added an offset around the shape.

So here in the offset distance tool you can click on the arrows to go up or down and create a thicker or thinner offset. Again it’s up to you how small or how large you like the offset to be.

I have got outwards selected and round, and I want to go with both those options, so I’ll go okay.

Now you can see that we’ve got this little sort of blemish here that’s we shouldn’t have.

To get rid of that blemish, I’m going to click on the outer shape and drag it down and I’m going to right click on it and click Ungroup.
Then I’m going to click away from the image.

Now I can just select that and click the delete key on my keyboard to get rid of it. There, that’s done.

Once you are happy with your text there are two ways that you can cut and engrave this depending on your preference.

Cutting and Engraving – 1

So the first way is where we have two separate pieces and we’ve got the welcome text cut and also the background cut and you can just glue them together.

You can color them in different colors and and glue them together.

What we need to do is have both of these in the same color so I’ve got both of them in green it doesn’t matter what color they are as long as they’re both the same color.

The over on the cuts and layers panel you want to select line, because we want to cut both of these shapes.

Then double click and select the settings that suit your machine for cutting.

I am cutting three millimeter MDF and I’m using a Sculpfun S30.

So my settings are 200 speed and power 100%, and I turn air assist on.

My Sculpfun has air assist with my machine and I want it on when I’m cutting.
So I’ll click ok and that’s it. The machine will now cut out each piece separately.

Cutting and Engraving – 2

If you want a different look, where the text is engraved onto the actual wood or MDF, then what you need to do is click on your welcome or whatever text you’ve got and then change it to another color.
It doesn’t matter what you change it to because we’re going to be engraving this.

You can see how it’s separated out at the moment. Well we need to change our settings.

We need to create this one as a fill because it’s going to engrave and again I’ll double click on the speed and power and change my settings here for my machine. For this layer I want 2000 speed and 20% power, and I don’t want air assist on because I’m engraving. Once those changes have been made I’ll go okay .

So that’s the engraving part set.

Now the outline is going to be cut exactly as it appears here.

So it’s going to be set to Line because it’s cutting. My Speed is 200 and the Power is 100%, with air assist on.

Now all we need to do is move our text over on top of our background.

And just to ensure that everything is centered just highlight everything by clicking and dragging from the right, and then click the Align option up here. This will center everything both vertically and horizontally.

Now there is just one more step before we send the file to the laser and that is to move the engrave layer to the top by clicking the arrow next to the layer. In this case it’s the purple layer, you will remember that previously it was below the line layer.

I like to engrave before cutting. I feel that there is less margin for error this way as the engraving is done on a sturdy base.