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Laser Cutting vs Laser Engraving: When to Use Which

The laser does the same thing in both modes — it directs energy onto material. Whether that energy cuts through or just marks the surface depends on the power, speed, and number of passes. Cutting = enough energy to vaporize a path through the material. Engraving = enough to char or ablate the surface, but not all the way through.

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When to cut

Use cut when you need a piece to physically separate from the surrounding material. Signs, stencils, ornaments, plaques, puzzle pieces — anything where the shape is the deliverable.

When to engrave (with Lazrit)

Use engrave for surface marks that don't separate material — outlines, fold scores, decorative detail on a plaque, model numbers on signage. Lazrit's engrave layer is on/off: a path is either cut or engrave, marked in the workspace. The export keeps the layers separate so LightBurn assigns different power/speed.

What Lazrit doesn't do

Lazrit doesn't do photo engraving, halftone, or dithered grayscale burns. Those are different workflows — for that, you want a tool built around photo-to-raster conversion. Lazrit's engrave layer is vector-based, intended for marks like outlines and labels.

Mixing cut and engrave

Most real jobs mix both. Lazrit handles this in one upload — vectorize the artwork, mark the engrave-layer paths, run topology on the cut layer, export. The result is a two-layer SVG that imports cleanly into LightBurn.

fundamentalscuttingengraving

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