Looking for some advice on running 2 lasers from the same PC. I have encountered a few things that forced me to adjust how I was trying to do it.
CO2 laser 1 - 60w w/ lightburn camera (ruida controller USB connected using packet transfer)
CO2 laser 2 - 100w w/ lightburn camera (ruida controller USBM connected using serial transfer)
I had to change to serial transfer because for some reason when I switched from laser 1 to laser 2 it would lock, not load, or show it switched but still send commands to laser 1. I tried right clicking to reset and it would show the controller ID for laser 1 even though I had laser 2 selected. So I figured maybe it was just a USB addressing issue… so I swapped it to serial. I now have both running at once and both cameras setup, but my next concern is my cut layers. I have lots of art saved in libraries and want to use them interchangeable between the two lasers, but they will have different cut settings based on the layer. Are those layers saved per laser, per job/project?
I’ve got the multiple lasers working - 2 instances of LB open at the same time.
But I can’t get the 2nd instance camera to work - and it seems to only want to recognize one camera calibration map? Dunno. Hoping @OZ will reply so that this can get sorted.
John
I was thinking it could be helpful if there were a way to just run it as the same program but with completely different/separate configurations. I work in fintech and your larger banks will have smaller banks they’ve bought up, so our software gives the user the ability to log into each separately until the bank finalizes merging all the things together. If the laser selection were able to also change out all the settings, camera, etc it would be cool. Or even just some kind of switch/selector to choose to do that. I dont mind running 2 separate instances on my PC, as I do need completely different cut and engrave settings, camera (calibration), and that seems to be an issue for it.
Just tonight, I setup to run a job on laser A, but had powered up laser B to mess with some settings. Hit start on the job for A and the head started moving on B, even though the device selected was listed as A. The lid was open so it didn’t fire the laser, but it did drag the auto focus probe through the honeycomb. Quick lesson learned there, but just reiterates my need to figure out a solid way to do this other than having 2 PC’s or spending time swapping cables or something crazy.
With 2 instances, I have each com port selected individually. Each device is a named thing too - so they do retain their parameters - so when I open lightburn, I choose the device and the port in the lower left, draw a square, and lower the bed and frame it. Then I open the other instance, repeat for named laser 2 on port 6 (example) and do the frame.
What I cannot get working is the second camera.
Both cameras are wired into the lasers, and connected on a hub inside, passing through the USB to the computer.
John
Yeah, even selecting the specific device port rather than auto it still is sending commands to the laser I turn on second. Wondering if I move one to ethernet or maybe buy a lightburn bridge it would work better.
I’m on a PC, I think I’m going to use one as serial and one as packet and see if that keeps them separated. I haven’t had time to play with it, I’m finally catching up on my workload so I’ll have time to dig into it more today and see what it takes to get it to function. I’ve even thought about putting one laser on a lightburn bridge if thats what it takes to fix the problem.
I got both working, I set one laser up to use Serial USB and the other using Packet USB. This seems to have fixed it sending commands to the wrong laser (to be safe I added the port info to the name so I can quickly troubleshoot it). It shouldnt matter, but thinking of how the USB ports connect into the motherboard itself I split up the devices so they are using separate sections of the board, they may route back to the same controller hub/chip but it did seem to remove some wonkyness with the cameras as well. I also now use 2 sessions at once to keep my work clean. I like to setup files on the outside of the laser bed work area as staging or design area, and use the “cut selected graphics” and when using the larger laser the bed size encompassed many of those so… 2 sessions of light burn works best.
I’ve even gone so far as to place my furthest lasers USB camera on a powered (active) USB extension cable as it was seeing some connection issues that I assume was due to the total draw on the USB controller. It didnt have issues until I added the additional camera, and the problem went away when i swapped to the active cable.