Any time you see a film where a laser engraves a design and then cuts out that design, it is done using a sequence of settings. At the time of publishing this, these sequences have to be loaded in manually in the LP app, one after another after the previous sequence has finished. This is a little time consuming but once you get the hang of it, it can go pretty quick when you know how to generate the files in an efficient manner. For most purposes a single engraving operation followed by a cutting operation is normally sufficient. A very easy way to accomplish this is using two layers in Inkscape. On one layer (called Engraving in this case) we have the image to be engraved and we resize it to the final required dimensions after ensuring the image is “clean” with no stray pixels that might cause alignment problems. Once we have our finished design, we duplicate it which puts an identical image on top of the first image, on the same layer. We move this duplicated image to another layer, in this case called “Cut”. Once this is done, we hide the layer called “Engraving” which prevents it from being modified as we work on the image on the Cut layer, which will be used, as the name suggests, to cut out the design after engraving.
Under the menu option Edit, we choose Preferences-> Behaviour-> Steps. The command we will be using in this example is Outset to create a border between the engraving and the cut line. If you already know you want a 1mm border, you can go ahead and set the Inset/Outset value to 1mm. If you’re not sure, try setting the value to 0.5mm. Each subsequent use of the Outset command will increase the border by another 0.5mm. When you have the desired border, with the image selected choose Path-> break apart from the menu. This makes the image look like a mess as all the individual components making up the image are individually selected, but that’s OK. With all the individual objects still selected, click the icon for “Group selected objects” of CTRL+G. This merges everything on the cut layer in to one solid object. Go ahead and click the red colour on the colour palette to turn this solid a red colour. (You can export this red image without turning it back to black, the LP app will do that for you). Turn the layer Engraving on again and the image to be engraved is displayed on top of the solid red image that shows the outline which will be cut. If everything looks OK, it’s time to export 2 files, one from each layer. With the selection tool selected, click and drag a box around both images, so that both are selected. Click the Export PNG icon and make sure that “Selection” is chosen as the area to export (not Page, Drawing etc). In the layers manager, turn one of the layers off, it doesn’t matter which. Export the PNG file to a destination of your choice. NOTE: Using non-English letters in the filename always make Inkscape crash for me, so bear that in mind. After you have exported the first image, turn on the layer you previously turned off, and turn off the layer you just exported. You now have the two files you need to engrave your design and then cut it out.
Because of the border, the image cannot be engraved in gcode mode, as this will remove the white area outside of your design, which is the border. Using this method, BIN is the preferred engraving method. To ensure the 2 images are perfectly aligned, do not move the preview window from the app, move the work piece instead. After the engraving, go back to select image for engraving and choose the red solid we exported. This HAS to be engraved as gcode. As soon as we select gcode, the solid is replaced by a single cut line. This image will automatically be in the correct position for cutting in relation to the finished engraving, as long as you haven’t moved anything, but do a preview just to make sure. Both the engraving and the cutting have to have the same size entered in the app for this to work. Choose the settings you have tested for cutting the material you have chosen and make sure you have enough passes to cut all the way through.
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