How do you save laser settings so you never guess twice?
Newcomers fire up a laser, guess a power and speed, and pray. The fix isn’t a better guess. It’s one sane test, then saving the result in a LightBurn material library — so that material is solved for good.
Applies to
- Process
- CO₂, diode & fiber/galvo lasers
- When
- Any material you’ll cut or engrave more than once
- Software
- LightBurn / EZCAD material or settings library
- Where
- LightBurn Library tab, saved as a library file
Why it matters
With power running 10–100% and speed from 1 to 600 mm/s, Steve Makes Everything puts the odds of guessing the perfect combination below flipping heads sixteen times in a row.
Googling doesn’t fix it. The numbers you find are for a diode when you own a CO₂, or a 20 W when yours is 40. Every guess wastes material — real money when the test piece is a $20–25 tumbler.
Finding the settings once is half of it. Keeping them is the other half. Pros keep a growing library — Laser Everything publish and keep updating theirs for CO₂ and fiber — so they never re-derive a material they’ve already run.
What good looks like
- Every material you use regularly has a saved, named entry
- New materials get one deliberate test, then go into the library
- The library lives in its own file you can load into any project
- Nobody on the machine starts from a blind guess or a mismatched forum number
How to apply it
- For an unknown material, run a narrowing material test rather than guessing.
- Set the winning speed and power (and frequency/pulse on a fiber) on a layer, and engrave a real image with it to confirm.
- Open LightBurn’s Library tab and create a new entry from the current layer.
- Fill in the material (acrylic), a title (matte black acrylic) and a description.
- Click New at the bottom to save the library as a file, named so you’ll find it.
- Next job: load the library, pick the entry, and assign it to your layer.
Exceptions & tradeoffs
Settings still drift with focus, lens, tube age and material batch. Treat a saved entry as a strong starting point, and spot-check it on a new batch of stock.
Steve’s acrylic numbers came off a 60 W MOPA galvo. Yours belong to your machine — which is the whole point of keeping your own library.
Common mistakes
- Grabbing a random power/speed off a web searchIt’s likely the wrong laser type or wattage — test and save your own
- Re-testing the same material every timeSave it once as a named entry and build a library
- Leaving your settings buried inside one project fileSave a library file you can load into any project
Frequently asked questions
- How do I save laser settings in LightBurn?Set the speed and power on a layer, open the Library tab, and create a new entry from the current layer. Then save the library as a file so you can load it into any project.
- Can I use someone else’s laser settings?Only as a starting point. Settings found online are often for a different laser type or wattage. Test on your machine, then save your own.
- What should a laser settings library include?Speed and power per material and operation (cut, engrave, score), plus frequency and pulse width on a fiber. Name each entry so matte black acrylic doesn’t get mixed up with clear.
- Do saved laser settings ever need re-testing?Spot-check them on a new batch of stock, or after a lens, tube or focus change. Settings drift with all of those.
Why guessing fails (the coin-flip odds) and why online settings rarely match your laser — Your Laser Settings Are a Hot Mess! Here's the Quick Fix! ↗ at 00:00.
Creating a material entry from the current layer and saving a LightBurn library file — Your Laser Settings Are a Hot Mess! Here's the Quick Fix! ↗ at 07:10.
Maintaining a growing, updated per-material parameter library — ALL of my Fiber Laser Parameters and CO2 Laser Settings ↗.
The coin-flip odds, the narrowing test and the LightBurn library steps are Steve Makes Everything’s, and the acrylic example came off his 60 W MOPA galvo. The growing-library idea echoes Laser Everything. The checklist and the spot-check-a-new-batch advice are mine.