Recipe & Settings Management

After 6 months of operation, your shop has hundreds of working settings combinations. Without a system, you'll redo test grids you already finished, lose customer-specific tunings, and quote jobs you can't reproduce. Here's the discipline.

The Lightburn Material Library: your foundation

Window → Material Library. This is your primary settings vault.

• Save EVERY successful job's settings: even one-off jobs. You will run them again.
• Naming convention: [material] - [thickness] - [goal] - [device-or-lens]. Examples:
  • Stainless 304 - 1mm - Black mark - Fiber 70mm
  • Birch ply - 3mm - Cut - CO2 2"
  • Anodized AL - any - White mark - Diode 20W
• Hierarchy: top-level by material; sub-categories per goal. Lightburn supports nested categories.
• Save with full layer settings including air assist, multi-pass, image mode.

The settings spreadsheet

Beyond Lightburn's library, maintain an external spreadsheet (Excel, Google Sheets, Airtable). Why: searchable, exportable, backup against Lightburn library corruption.

Columns to track:

• Material name + supplier + lot number + date received
• Goal (mark / engrave / cut / color)
• Device used (Fiber 60W MOPA / CO2 35W RF / etc.)
• Lens
• Speed / Power / Frequency / Pulse / Passes / Line interval
• Focus offset (defocus value)
• Notes (e.g., "wipe with IPA before; mask with painter's tape" or "Oramask 813 for tumblers")
• Result quality (1-5 rating)
• Photo file path (link to portfolio image)

The test-grid archive

Every test grid you run produces data. Archive it.

1. Save the test grid SVG (Generator output) with descriptive name.
2. Photograph the engraved test piece in good lighting (daylight LED, 45° angle).
3. Annotate the winning cell with software (Photoshop, Affinity, even Preview).
4. File the photo + SVG together: tests/2026-04-stainless-color-blue.jpg + .svg.
5. Six months later when you re-test a similar material, reference the previous test for a quick start.

Material lot tagging

"304 stainless" is a chemistry range. Different lots from the same supplier color differently under fiber laser annealing. Defense:

• Tag every incoming material lot with supplier + lot number + date received.
• Tape the tag to the back of one sample piece from each lot.
• When re-ordering: ask if the new lot is from the same heat number / batch.
• For premium work: negotiate matched-lot orders, or buy enough at once for the whole production run.

Customer-specific recipes

Repeat customers usually want IDENTICAL output run after run. Track:

• Customer's preferred materials, settings, and finish.
• Photo of approved proof, saved with project file.
• Notes on customer preferences (font, layout, antiquing level, packaging).
• Folder structure: customers/customer-name/orders/YYYYMMDD-orderID/

Version control

When you tune settings over time:

• Don't OVERWRITE proven settings. Save a NEW Material Library entry with version suffix.
• Example: Stainless 304 - Black mark - v1, v2, v3.
• Keep old versions for 6+ months, sometimes you'll go back.
• For shared shop: only the lead operator updates main Material Library entries; junior operators experiment in their own.

Backup strategy

• Weekly: export Material Library to file. Lightburn → Material Library → Export Library. Save to cloud or external drive.
• Monthly: snapshot the entire customers/ and tests/ directories.
• Cloud sync for project files (Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox). NAS for high-volume storage.
• Document the backup process so a junior operator can run it.

The audit habit

Once a quarter:

1. Pick 5 random Material Library entries.
2. Run a small test piece to verify they still work.
3. If a recipe failed, investigate (lens drift, machine state, material change), don't just delete.
4. Document any required updates.

The single biggest mistake

"I'll remember the settings; I don't need to write them down." After 50 jobs, you don't remember. After 200, you can't even retrace which Lightburn project file matches which customer. Document compulsively from day one, past-you ALWAYS thanks present-you.