Just a few years ago, it was impossible to imagine that laser cutters would be so fast, so accurate and so inexpensive that you can have one in your garage or craft room. And yet, here they are.
You may have opted for an industry-leading Epilog Laser. Or you may have bought in at a competitive price with a Boss Laser. Or you may be taking a chance on a new entrant like the very nicely spec’d Aeon lasers. You could even be doing it yourself.
No matter which of these you’re getting started with, you likely have Lightburn in your toolkit. Want to make some great stencils with your laser? Look no further.
Make a Bridged Stencil SVG at Bay Stencil
Follow the simple steps in the video to yield a bridged multi-layer stencil.
Import your SVG into Lightburn
Steps to Import Your Bridged SVGs into Lightburn:
1. import all layers into the canvas together
2. select all the grouped layers together
3. scale (stretch or shrink) the layers together to fit your canvas or cut areaBe careful not to scale or stretch the layers independently.
You can also import the bridged files with registration marks into Lightburn. The files that have registration marks are grouped together so that you don’t have to do anything special when importing. They’ll just cut. Of course, you can always ungroup them to manipulate them independently, but make sure you know what you’re doing.
What is Bay Stencil doing for me?
Why do I need Bay Stencil? Bay Stencil not only color separates the uploaded image for you (producing a pleasant, design-oriented poster effect) but also bridges the subsequent layers so that you can cut and use the stencil without pieces falling out of it. The bridges are what hold the masking pieces in place in a stencil of, for example, a bulls-eye (or the letter ‘O’), and Bay Stencil’s secret sauce is placing the bridges in just the right places!
What program do you cut with?
- Cricut Design Space
- Sure Cuts a Lot
- Make the Cut!
- Lightburn
- Silhouette Studio or Silhouette Go