Ok. The layout is I have an aufero portable laser. 180x180 bed size. I have been engraving without issue for a few weeks using lightburn. I decided to finally plug in and test the Ortur rotary tool and try tumblers. I did use the grbl software to start up that process due to that being the software on the instructions.
Now I have gone back to lightburn and adjusted settings to use the rotary there. Did some testing and engraved some mugs. All good.
… Until I tried to go back to the standard bed engraving (no rotary tool). Had some issues figuring it out at first but finally got everything back to working… kindof
now in lightburn it shows my 180x180 bed. but if I try to put a small box in the upper left corner it will not frame, it thinks it is out of bounds. the bed of lightburn and the actual bed of the laser no longer line up. I AM using absolute coordinates. I cleared the origin… I have tried whatever I can think of but have no real clue how to get this back to where my engravable area lines up with the software again.
PLEASE HELP!
I have searched it but so far nothing has worked. Most posts say to switch to absolute coords and that fixes it… but i am on it and its not lining up still
In one of those images is the bed. The smaller blue box is the only area the machine will let me use. The rest of the 180x180 it thinks is out of bounds
I’m noticing a few separate issues based on your screenshots.
It looks like your origin is set incorrectly. Do your jog controls work correctly? Meaning left goes left, right goes right, etc? If not, change the origin in Edit->Device Settings to lower left.
Your device type is set for GRBL-M3. Your laser should be using “GRBL”. Change this by pushing Devices button in laser window, then Edit.
Neither of those things should be affecting your available workspace area. You may have an offset created.
Can you run these commands in Console after doing a homing operation?
$#
?
After all this is sorted you should think about updating your firmware on the laser as well. It’s a general recommendation from Ortur due to some recent changes. Ortur – Firmware Repository – Ortur
You and everyone else does this and Lightburn is setup to handle this, but not enough people advise the users of this potential trap.
I’m sure the rotary installation went something like this…
You modified the controllers information and got it to work right…with the rotary. Probably didn’t work ‘right off the bat’ so you fiddled with the settings… Finally success…
Now back to normal, no rotary, machine isn’t working correctly…
‘Edit → Machine Settings’ will read your controllers configuration and allow you to ‘save’ it in a file. If you had done this then… You would go back to machine settings, ‘read’ the standard configuration file you have back in and ‘write’ it to the controller. You are back up with the original settings. And everything works like it did before…
I have a few of them depending on what I’m doing. They are settings files (.lbset).
I wish they would tell people this when they start any kind of adjustments. It would same many hours and allow more hair growth.
I did not mess with much. Followed the instructions as detailed as I could. The only time I fiddled was in the roller settings in lightroom. At first I couldnt get the diameter anywhere near where they showed but I widened the rollers and adjusted the rotation number and was able to dial it in.
I did back up the settings before I did anything and tried to revert back after but it didnt help. I think my main issue was starting the process in GRBL software and then jumping to lightroom.
I had a mental lapse thinking I could use GRBL for roller work and lightroom for all else momentarily forgetting the settings are changing the laser itself and not just the software settings.
I think overall I will be getting a second laser and dedicating this one to roller and getting a LM2 for everything else.
I did not try the jog features to know if they worked. I did go in and update the settings you suggested.
I ended up seeing if I could flash the laser and the software to factory settings and started with the laser. I downloaded the latest firmware and flashed the laser and it fixed the issue. I do not know why the backup i created did not work but the firmware definitely did the trick.
I definitely back up everything and stored the downloaded firmware just in case. always good to be able to go back to stock if needed. Hopefully I can continue to learn more and have this not happen again. I doubt i will be opening grbl software at all as well.
I cannot currently afford to buy one either, but all money made with this machine will go into a separate account and will fund the new one. I am already regretting not paying the difference for the bigger bed size.
