Engraving profiles & job templates
Engraving profiles, start & end G-code, macros and job templates are the reusable settings in GRBL Server — what stops you from re-entering power, speed and passes for every job. They live under Setup in the sidebar. Most workshops end up with a handful of profiles and a couple of dozen templates: enough to cover their common materials, never enough to feel cluttered.
How they fit together:
- An engraving profile = engraving settings + one start & end G-code + the macros its jobs show.
- A job template = a machine + an engraving profile + a layout (grid, crop or clip shape).
Engraving profiles
An engraving profile holds the power, speed and fill settings for a material — like a recipe. Think of it as the filament profile in a slicer: the same SVG comes out completely differently on 3 mm plywood and on anodised aluminium, and that difference lives in the profile. A default profile is ready to use.
One profile covers every file format: SVG and DXF outlines and fills, PNG/JPG images, and SVGs that combine both. You don't need a separate "vector profile" and "raster profile" for the same material.
Editing a profile
Edit (or New profile) on the Engraving profiles page opens a single page with everything a profile holds, one card per section — Name, Power, Speed & passes, Image, Vector quality, G-code output, Start & end G-code and Macros — listed down the side to jump between. On/off settings are switches, and choices read in plain words. Save profile (or Ctrl+S) saves everything at once, and the page warns before you leave with unsaved changes.
The list shows each profile's key settings — power range, outline power, speed, passes and fill — with Duplicate, Export and Delete in its menu. Tick several profiles to duplicate, export or delete them together.
Engraving settings reference
Powers are on a 0–1000 scale in every profile and are rescaled to each machine's Max power (S value) when the G-code is generated — so the same profile burns correctly on any machine.
Power
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Engrave min power | 0 | Power for the lightest fill and image tones. |
| Engrave max power | 1000 | Power for the darkest fill and image tones. |
| Contour power | 500 | Constant power for outlines and cuts. DXF outlines always use it. |
| Contour power source | Fixed | Fixed uses Contour power. From stroke color lets each SVG path's stroke colour pick its power between Engrave min and max (dark strokes burn stronger); paths without a stroke fall back to Contour power. |
| Power mapping curve | Linear | How colour darkness maps to power, for fills, images and stroke colours: Linear, Gamma (with an exponent), S-curve, Quadratic, Square root, or a manual curve you draw by dragging points on the preview. |
| Color intensity | Average | How a vector colour's brightness is worked out: Average of R, G, B; Perceived brightness; or the darkest / lightest channel. |
| Engrave fill | On | Fill the inside of closed vector shapes. |
| Fill line spacing | 0.1 mm | Distance between fill lines. |
| Fill / scan pattern | Horizontal | Direction of fill and image scan lines: Horizontal, Vertical, the two diagonals, Crosshatch, or Diagonal crosshatch. |
| Small feature protection | On | Relaxes the fill on thin parts of a design, part by part: under about 0.25 mm a crosshatch keeps only the direction along the stroke; under about 0.15 mm the fill is dropped and the outline alone engraves it. Keeps small lettering readable instead of burning solid. |
| Gap protection | Off | Keeps small unengraved details inside engraved areas open — holes, specks, narrow slits and notch tips narrower than about 0.3 mm, such as the eyes of a traced black cat — by widening each one by Gap widening on every side. Vector fills only. |
| Gap widening | 0.1 mm | How far each narrow gap is widened. Match it to how far your laser burns past a line's edge on the material. |
Speed & passes
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Work speed | 1000 mm/min | Feed rate while the laser is engraving or cutting. |
| Travel speed | 1000 mm/min | Feed rate for positioning moves with the laser off. |
| Passes | 1 | How many times the whole program is repeated — for cutting thicker material. |
Image (PNG, JPG)
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Pixel size | 0.1 mm | Size of one image pixel on the material. |
| Scan direction | Both ways | Both ways (zig-zag, faster) or One way (always left to right). |
| Blank-travel skip | 10 mm | Blank stretches longer than this are crossed with a rapid move. 0 disables skipping. |
| Skip-power threshold | 0 | Pixels at or below this power aren't burned. |
Scaling, units & vector quality
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Scale | 1× | Uniform scale for the whole design, text included. |
| Units | mm | The job's units, declared at its start (G21/G20) so leftover machine settings can't misread it. DXF drawings are converted from their own units. |
| Curve approximation | 0.1 mm | Maximum deviation when curves are flattened into line segments. |
| Operation / input tolerance | — | Geometry tolerances. Leave them alone unless support asks. |
G-code output
The defaults match what GRBL expects, so you only need this section when a particular controller wants something different.
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Laser-on command | M4 | M4 — dynamic power, scaled with speed (best for engraving) — or M3 — constant power. |
| Laser-off command | M5 | Switches the laser off. |
| Travel / Cut command | G0 / G1 | Use the zero-padded forms (G00/G01) for controllers that expect them. |
| Coordinate precision | 3 | Decimal places for coordinates. |
| G-code before / after each design | — | Inserted around the G-code of every file in the job. Commands that should run once per job belong in the profile's start & end G-code. |
Start & end G-code
Start & end G-code holds commands sent once at the start and once at the end of every job that uses a profile. Each profile picks one; several profiles can share it, and a change applies to all of them on their next job.
Common uses:
- Home the machine before each job (
$H). - Turn air assist or an exhaust fan on at the start and off at the end.
- Park the head at a known position when finished.
Each one is a card showing its first lines and which profiles use it — one that's in use can't be deleted until no profile uses it.
Macros
A macro is a one-click command button — Home, Frame, focus at 30 mm — shown in the Job Station for jobs whose profile includes it. Unlike start & end G-code, a macro runs only when you press it.
- Commands are typed one per line and sent in order, each waiting for the one before it.
- Values in braces are filled in when the macro runs: the machine's work area (
{width},{depth},{height}) and the edges of the job ({min_x},{max_x},{min_y},{max_y}) — so a Frame macro can trace the job's outline on any machine. - Its icon is picked from the built-in ones, uploaded, or left out.
- Works with says whether it's offered on every machine or only on certain firmware.
Workflows can send macros too, before or after each job — see Machine commands.
Job templates
A job template remembers a job's machine, engraving profile and layout — a grid, a crop or a clip shape — so the same job is set up again in one click.
Creating a template
The quickest way is from the job editor: once a job is set up the way you like, click Save as template. You can also click New template on the Job templates page and fill in one dialog:
- Machine — or No machine — choose later.
- Engraving profile.
- Layout — optionally Arrange the designs in a grid; see Grids.
- Crop or clip — Neither, Crop to a rectangle or Clip to a shape, every distance in millimetres; see Clipping & cropping.
Using a template
- In the job editor, pick it from Job template — the machine, profile and layout are applied for you. Update template saves changes back to it.
- In a workflow, pick it on a Job node — anything set on the node overrides the template. See Workflows.
Import & export
Engraving profiles and job templates can be exported to a file and imported on another workshop computer — handy for keeping two hosts in step or backing up a dialled-in material library. Exporting a job template brings the engraving profiles it uses along with it. Importing reuses anything already present with the same name and values, so importing the same file twice doesn't pile up copies.