EasyTrace5000 Laser Processing Guide

Fume Hazard

How the Laser Route Works

Laser is not a mode you switch the application into. Every operation has its own machine setting, and setting one to laser changes what it asks you for and what it produces.

A laser operation runs two stages instead of four: there is no depth to set and no toolpath to plan, so what you generate is what you export. That is why this page is shorter than the CNC one.

The per-operation choice is the useful part. A board can have its copper isolation ablated by a fibre laser while its holes and outline are milled on the router - same project, same source files, same origin, two output formats from one export.

All five operations run on a laser: Copper Isolation, Copper Clearing, Drill, Board Cutout and Stencil.

The application does not drive your laser. It does the geometry - kerf compensation, true bounds, fill generation and path ordering - and hands you a file for LightBurn, EZCAD, RDWorks or xTool Studio to run.

The Workflow

1. Setting the Machine

Set the operation to laser before you generate. It decides which parameters you see and how many stages the operation has, so changing it afterwards rebuilds the form and invalidates anything already generated.

A laser operation shows isolation width, clearing strategy, spot size and cut side. It does not show passes, depth or feeds, because none of those mean anything to a beam.

2. Loading & Placement

Identical to the CNC route. Isolation and clearing take Gerber, drilling takes Excellon, cutout takes Gerber or SVG, stencils take a paste or soldermask layer. Set the origin, rotation and mirror exactly as you would for milling - see Placing the Board.

A rotated or mirrored board exports at its true size and position, so nothing is clipped and nothing lands on a blank canvas.

3. Laser Settings

Laser Spot Size

The effective focal diameter of your beam, in millimetres. It plays the same role a tool diameter plays on the router, so every offset is kerf-compensated against it. Set it in Machine Settings; the operation shows it read-only.

Export Format

SVG for vectors, PNG for a high-DPI raster. Choosing PNG hides the fill strategy options, because your laser software will be doing the filling.

Measure your spot size rather than trusting the spec sheet. It is the one value everything else is derived from, and getting it wrong shows up as traces that are systematically too thin or too fat.

4. Generating

Set the operation's parameters and click Generate. When it finishes, the operation is ready to export - there is no preview or toolpath stage to pass through.

5. Export

Open the Export Manager. Laser operations are packaged rather than compiled, so the options are about how your control software will read the file:

Layer Colours

Assign a colour per operation - red for isolation, blue for drill, whatever your workflow uses. Laser software maps power, speed and frequency onto those colours.

Unique colours per pass

Gives every pass its own colour instead of one colour per layer, for software that assigns settings per colour rather than per group.

Raster resolution (DPI)

PNG only, up to 4000 DPI. The image is dimensionally exact, so it imports at the right physical size.

Export margin

A buffer in millimetres around the artwork, so the head has overscan room and nothing sits hard against the edge.

Reverse cut order

Flips the order geometry is written in, for software that processes a file from the wrong end.

Clearing Strategies

Everything starts from the area that needs to be ablated. For a clearing operation that is the copper itself. For an isolation operation it is a band around every trace and pad, as wide as the isolation width you set.

Once the area exists, the strategy decides how the beam covers it.

Offset Paths (concentric)

Concentric lines shrinking inward from the boundary. The number of passes comes from the isolation width, the spot size and your spacing setting - you do not set it directly.

Recommended. Concentric paths follow the shape of the area, so they do not leave the corner streaking you get where a straight hatch line ends against a curve.

Filled Polygon

Exports the area as a single solid shape and lets your laser software generate its own fill. Use it when you trust LightBurn's or EZCAD's native hatching more than a file full of individual lines, or when the file would otherwise be too large to handle.

Hatch Fill

Dense directional lines across the area at an angle you choose. 45° crosses both horizontal and vertical traces evenly, which is why it is the default. Extra hatch passes are rotated from that base angle so coverage evens out instead of streaking in one direction.

Colinear strokes are fused across the whole job, even where they came from different operations. On a dense board that removes a large share of the line count and a matching share of the head's travel time.

Line Spacing

Offset and hatch share one spacing control with three ways to express the same thing. Pick whichever unit your laser software uses so you are not converting in your head:

Step-over (%)

Overlap between adjacent lines as a percentage of spot size. 50% is a sensible default; drop to around 30% if you see streaks of unablated copper between lines.

Lines per centimetre

Absolute line density in metric. What most European fibre software expects.

Lines per inch

The same in imperial. What most galvo software expects.

Clearing operations also have a clearing padding value - extra margin ablated beyond the copper's own outline, to give the beam room at the edges of a pour.

Drill & Board Cutout

Holes and outlines are single-line cuts rather than areas to ablate, so they have no fill strategy. What they have is cut side, which decides where the kerf falls:

• Outside - the path sits half a spot outside the line, so the board comes out at its designed size.
• Inside - half a spot inside, for openings that need to hold their size.
• On the line - straight down the line with no compensation, taking half a kerf from each side.

Same three options as the router, with the spot size standing in for a tool diameter.

Stencils

A solder-paste stencil is a normal laser job. The apertures are cut straight out of your stencil stock, and the geometry is the same one a vinly cutter/drag knife would follow.

There is no output selector here. On the CNC route you have to say whether the stencil is milled or knife-cut; on a laser there is nothing to choose - you already have the machine that cuts it, so the operation just produces the file.

Aperture offset

Shrinks or grows every aperture. A small negative value such as -0.05 mm is the usual starting point; it stops paste bridging between close pads. On a laser, remember the beam has its own width - the spot size is already accounted for, so this is your paste margin, not your kerf.

Corner radius

Rounds the aperture corners. A beam has no blade to drag, so a laser does not need this the way a knife plotter does - leave it at 0 unless you want rounded apertures for their own sake, which does release paste slightly more cleanly on fine-pitch parts.

Exclude pads over drill holes

Drops apertures that sit over a hole, so you are not pasting into a via.

Registration holes

Optional alignment holes outside the board, for pinning the stencil over the PCB. They ignore the aperture offset and the corner radius - they have to match your dowels, not your paste.

Polyimide film and thin steel shim are the usual stock. Both cut cleanly, and both need the same ventilation as a board - see the fume warning above.

Export Formats

SVG (vector)

The exported strokes are hairlines: they show up as visible lines in a browser, and import into CAM software as zero-width cutting vectors. You get something you can actually look at and something your machine can actually follow, from the same file.

Curves are exported as true arc commands rather than as many short segments, which keeps the file small and gives the head a smooth curve to follow.

PNG (raster)

Rasterising is the right choice for direct image-engraving modes and for photoresist exposure. But holes and outlines are single-line cuts that lose their meaning as pixels, so a PNG export gives you two files: the high-DPI PNG for copper, and a matching -vectors.svg holding the drill and cutout paths. Load both into your control software and they line up exactly.

Controller Notes