KerfAdjuster

✂ What is kerf?

When a laser cuts material, the beam vaporizes a thin strip — this strip is called the kerf. A typical CO₂ laser has a kerf of 0.1–0.3mm depending on the material, beam focus, speed, and power settings. Without compensation, your finished parts will be slightly undersized and holes slightly oversized.

↔ How does compensation work?

The tool shifts each cutting path by half the kerf width. The direction depends on what kind of shape it is:

• Outer profiles — path moves outward, so the kept part stays the correct size
• Holes & cutouts — path moves inward, so the hole stays the correct size

🔍 How does it detect holes vs. outlines?

The tool builds a containment hierarchy by checking which closed shapes are inside other shapes. Outermost shapes (depth 0) are outer profiles. Shapes inside those (depth 1) are holes. Shapes inside holes (depth 2) are islands — and so on, alternating direction at each level.

📐 How do I measure my kerf?

Cut a small rectangle (e.g. 50×50mm) from your material at your usual speed/power settings. Measure the actual part with calipers and compare to the design dimension. The difference is your kerf. For example: designed 50mm, measured 49.8mm → kerf is 0.2mm.

📁 What DXF features are supported?

The tool handles LINE, ARC, CIRCLE, ELLIPSE, LWPOLYLINE, POLYLINE, and SPLINE entities (including quadratic and cubic Bezier curves). Open paths (lines, arcs) are automatically chained into closed contours when their endpoints are close enough. Text, dimensions, and annotations are ignored and not included in the output.

📏 What about units (mm vs inches)?

The tool auto-detects your DXF file's units from the $INSUNITS and $MEASUREMENT header variables. If neither exists, it estimates based on geometry size. You can always manually override the unit setting, and the kerf value will be auto-converted to match your file's coordinate system.