StrataBurn

Opening soon

For laser cutters that read SVG or DXF

Draw a box on the map. Cut the depth.

StrataBurn turns a lake, a bay or a mountainside into a stack of layers you can cut, using real survey data for the place you picked. You get SVG and DXF files with one colour per layer, ready to open in LightBurn.

Lower Tampa Bay cut as six stacked wood layers, deepest water darkest
27.56°N 82.74°W Lower Tampa Bay, six layers from NOAA survey depths. The dark groove running corner to corner is the shipping channel under the Sunshine Skyway.

Four ways in

A place on the map

Search for a lake, bay, harbour or mountain by name, or drag a box anywhere in the world. StrataBurn fetches the water depth and the lie of the land for that box and cuts it into layers.

Your own elevation file

Already have a GeoTIFF from a survey, a drone flight or a county GIS site? Upload it and it goes through the same slicing, checks and export as a map.

A photo

Upload a PNG, JPG, WebP or BMP. StrataBurn splits it into layers by light and dark, traces each one into cut lines, and checks that the stack still looks like your picture.

A sentence

Describe it, like a heron standing in reeds, and pick a style: clean geometric shapes, or an illustration that gets traced into layers. Choose square, landscape or portrait to fit your sheet.

From the app

A StrataBurn design of Saginaw Bay, Michigan, with depth layers, roads and rivers, beside the map of the selected area
Saginaw Bay, Michigan About 3,700 km². Depth from NOAA's Great Lakes survey grid, with roads and rivers on their own layers and the islands along the east shore kept as land.
A StrataBurn design of Playa del Carmen and Cozumel, with ocean depth layers around the outlined island
Playa del Carmen and Cozumel, Mexico Open ocean: depth from the GEBCO global grid, with Cozumel's coastline drawn in.

Making a map piece

  1. Choose what goes on it

    Water depth, the shape of the land around it, or both. Add rivers, roads, buildings and place names on their own layers, and a compass rose in one of three styles, along the top or bottom edge.

  2. Decide how it's sliced

    Pick a number of layers, three to seven, or a fixed depth per layer in metres or feet. For a very deep lake, change the spacing so the shallows keep their detail instead of disappearing into one sheet. Several lakes of different depths? Give each one its own full set of layers.

  3. Set the size

    Give the longest side, anywhere from 50 mm to a metre (2 to 39 inches). The other side follows the shape of the box you drew.

  4. Get a second opinion

    Before you generate, StrataBurn suggests a layout for the area and lists landmarks worth labelling, and warns you if the depth data there is rough.

Mount St. Helens cut as six stacked wood layers, with the crater open to the north
46.19°N 122.19°W Mount St. Helens from USGS 10 m elevation. Six layers, crater open to the north.

Once it's made

StrataBurn showing a finished Tampa Bay design next to the map of the selected area, with its check results and a box for changes
A finished design beside the map it came from, with its checks and a box for changes.
The layer editor with a shape selected and the list of cut, engrave and score layers
The layer editor: pick a shape, then pick the layer it belongs on.

  • Side by side with the map

    The design appears next to a picture of the area you selected, with the water outlined, so you can see what was treated as water before you cut anything.

  • Change it in plain words

    Not quite right? Type what to change, such as fewer layers, deeper water or add a compass, and StrataBurn remakes it.

  • Move shapes between layers

    Open the layer editor, click any line or shape, and drop it onto another layer.

  • A report card

    Every design comes with the results of its checks, plus which data sources were used and how much of the water they covered.

  • Go and do something else

    Big areas take a few minutes. Your design waits in a queue, and a notification (or an email, if you want one) tells you it's ready.

  • Everything you've made

    Past designs stay in your history to download again. If one comes out wrong, report it from the download screen.

The files

The Tampa Bay piece as cut lines, each layer in a different colour
The Tampa Bay piece from the top of the page, as you'd download it. Each colour is one sheet.
  • SVG and DXF. Opens in LightBurn and xTool Creative Space, with LightBurn's layer colours already set.
  • Sized to your material. Tell it the longest side of your sheet and every layer comes out at that size.
  • Registration frame on every sheet, so the stack lines up when you glue it.
  • Nothing too small to cut. Slivers under 1 mm are removed from cut layers before you download.
  • Checked before you get it. Crossing lines, broken shapes and missing layers are caught and reported.

Free sample packs

Four finished designs you can cut this weekend, no account needed. Each pack has every layer as an SVG for LightBurn and an .xcs for xTool Creative Space, a build guide with the glue-up order, and a preview of the finished piece. Enter your email and the download starts straight away. We'll also email you once, when StrataBurn opens.

Lake Superior as stacked wood layers, showing the largest of the Great Lakes, with its deep trough off the north shore

Lake Superior

4 layers · 300 × 150 mm · 26 pieces

NOAA Great Lakes bathymetry

San Francisco Bay as stacked wood layers, showing the shipping channel under the Golden Gate

San Francisco Bay

5 layers · 209 × 300 mm · 25 pieces

NOAA coastal elevation models

Mount Rainier as stacked wood layers, showing the summit cone and the ridges running off it

Mount Rainier

5 layers · 300 × 300 mm · 23 pieces

USGS 3D Elevation Program

Grand Canyon as stacked wood layers, showing the Colorado River cut between the South and North Rims

Grand Canyon

5 layers · 300 × 300 mm · 34 pieces

USGS 3D Elevation Program

Released under CC BY 4.0: cut them, share them, remix them or sell what you make. Just credit StrataBurn.

Free converter

Moving from LightBurn to an xTool? Our LightBurn to xTool converter turns .lbrn2 projects into .xcs files with the layers intact. Free, open source, and it runs in your browser, so your files are never uploaded.

Where the depth comes from

Every design uses the best source that covers the spot you picked. If only rough data exists there, StrataBurn tells you before you start, not after.

US coasts
NOAA hydrographic surveys, 2–16 m
Great Lakes
NOAA Great Lakes bathymetry
US and Ontario lakes
State and provincial lake surveys
European seas
EMODnet Digital Bathymetry
Australia
Geoscience Australia AusBathyTopo
Arctic
IBCAO, 100 m
Everywhere else
GEBCO global grid; GLOBathy for 1.4 million lakes
Shorelines
OpenStreetMap

Lake with no survey on file? Give StrataBurn its name and it will look for a published depth chart. Charts it finds are reviewed and added, so the next person to pick that lake gets them too.

Pricing

Not set yet. When StrataBurn opens you'll be able to pay for a single design when you need one, or join as a member if you make them often. Prices will be posted here before anyone is charged.

Want to know when it opens?