Merry Christmas Eve! I do not yet own a Langmuir system but will be getting on shortly. I’m curious about the software that is used, I see a lot of people use fusion 360, can you also use lightburn?
Welcome to the forum!
Regarding your question about Lightburn, the answer is ‘Maybe’. It depends on HOW you want to use it.
If you use it as a Graphics/CAD tool, export your work as an SVG and then import into SheetCam (or Fusion CAM), and then use either of those CAM tools to generate the code for the FireControl program that drives the CrossFire table, this process will work and, in fact, is a pretty good method if you already are familiar with LightBurn’s graphics tools.
The difficulty is that FireControl REQUIRES a file that has been post processed by a compatible CAM tool and as of this reply, there are only two of those: SheetCam or Fusion 360 CAM.
Using SheetCam is easy to use if you have an SVG or similar 2D Vector graphics file and it works well for Plasma Cutting applications.
Fusion 360 is very powerful, but has a correspondingly steep learning curve. If you need the power then it’s an excellent tool to use. If you don’t need the 3D power, in my opinion, SheetCam is a far easier (and lower cost) route to take.
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Welcome to the forum.
The only thing I would add to what Tom said is that Fusion 360 is free to use for hobby/personal use. To qualify, you need to make less than $1000 dollars per year on your designs on Fusion 360.
But as he said, there is a steep learning curve. There is lots of help on this forum to help you along the way, whichever way you go.
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Thank you for the detailed response. My concern is getting frustrated with trying to learn Fusion 360 and giving up.
My main use would be for my own needs and hobbies.
I’ve used lightburn for SVG creation (for both our laser cutters and for plasma cutting). But, as the guys said, that’s only the CAD side. You’ll need to use sheetcam to take your SVG in and produce the g-code for FireControl. For simple things, the ‘free’ version of sheetcam only limits the number of outputed g-code lines. For cutting started, free was fine for me.
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