I have a red and black 100w machine with a Ruida controller. I would like to just have it set up so that it only ever uses the honeycomb portion of the bed. At the moment if i move my work to the very edge of the lightburn screen which of course is set to 700x500 the laser will cut as it should. Rather than having to move then frame the work everytime to get it to be just on the honeycomb is there a technique or a setting that does this automatically, like an overlayed template that automatically opens. Resizing the bed doesn’t centre it so that doesn’t work. Any ideas? It would just speed me up a touch thanks.
I don’t quite understand the question. Is the honeycomb on your laser significantly smaller than 700 x 500?
Yes the frame is 20mm and I don’t want to cut straight onto that.
Make a template file in LightBurn that has a rectangle drawn in LB that covers just the honeycomb area set not to output. Then just keep your design inside this area.
From a strictly mechanical standpoint, you may be able to add spacers to the inductive sensors that determine machine-zero. They would be of the dimension from where the 0,0 point starts to where you want it to start. For example if the 0,0 point is currently 10 mm inside the framing, you’d want to have a 10 mm spacer behind the sensors.
Obviously if there is a difference between the current x and current y, those numbers would be different. Once the sensors are spaced out, your bed size settings in the controller would function as desired.
I believe it’s possible to specify a home offset in the vendor settings of the machine, and I know it’s possible to reduce the travel length of an axis. The two together might do what you’re asking.
There isn’t a feature for this in LightBurn, however you could create a project that contains a rectangle of your actual usable area, and use that as a template when starting a new design.