I have added a diode laser to my LongMill mods, as I know others here have. I’ve played with a few programs to use with the laser and settled on LightBurn. The price was very right and the learning curve is not too steep.
That said, I have much to learn, so I’ve been watching the youtube tutorials posted by LB. In one of them, they demonstrate the trace function.
I’ve never had very good results in VCarvePro converting bitmaps to vectors. I frequently end up with vector graphics with open vectors and details missing altogether. (I’m finally getting to the reason for this post.) Since watching the LB video, I have taken several bitmaps that gave me bad results in VCP, used the trace feature in LB, exported the resulting vector as a dxf, then imported that into VCP. Without exception, VCP finds no open vectors, the results are excellent and the carves are exactly what I was hoping for.
If you have any interest in this, I recommend that you watch the LB Youtube video, which explains the ins and outs of their trace function in great detail.