Hi all,
New to XTool D1 and laser engraving/light burn,but working through it.
I connected a USB camera to Lightburn. It’s all calibrated and aligned.
I put 4 wooden coasters down on the bed, updated the overlay, imported an image to the first coaster for a test. I was under the assumption that the laser would go to that first image and just cut. So I ran a frame test and it wasn’t even close. Messing with the start from positions menu, but not having luck. If I try absolute coords, it goes top left and even tries to go farther. There must be some device settings or something I’m missing.
First question is: Is it possible to use the camera and overlay to automatically duplicate the image that I see on my workspace without having to manually align and frame it?
Second question. Assuming I get the job started with the correct staring point and nothing in the engraver moves, would I be able to cut multiple coasters in a single job?
Roughly how far off are you talking about? Trying to get a sense of the scale of the problem.
Proper or intuitive camera use requires that you use Abosolute Coords.
Does your laser work with Absolute Coords reliably without consideration for camera? This would require that you start the laser with the head in the top-left of your machine.
I interpret this to mean that you want to align a design that you have in workspace to the workpiece that’s seen in the overlay? If so, then answer is no. LightBurn has no semantic knowledge of what the overlay “contains”.
If this is not what you mean please clarify.
If you put 4 coasters on the bed and align 4 designs to those 4 coasters, there’s nothing preventing you from trying to burn those 4 designs in one job.
Thanks for the input. I have only been using current position for the starting point up until now. I’ll run some tests on absolute coords and post back. Camera is really handy for designing and sizing.
Not sure if this screen shot posted, but I put the laser in the top left, ran a frame test and it framed as if the coaster was completely cornered up in the top left. Maybe that’s how I need to place everything? If so, that would be an easy fix…
Are you using cross-hairs or primary laser for framing?
It’s also possible that you may need to go through camera alignment process again, especially if you weren’t following the startup procedure when you completed alignment.
crosshairs and they have the 16mm offset.
I think you’re right. I’ll realign and try again. It’s just off by what it says on the image XY coords and the Get position coords.
Thanks so much. Guess I didn’t know there were actually startup procedures…oops.
This is only because your machine doesn’t have homing switches. If it did and homed automatically your 0,0 position would be set by the machine and repeatable. Because it doesn’t home you need to manually establish the 0,0 posiiton through the startup procedure.
Now it frames perfectly with the crosshairs, but when it started engraving, it was bumped over to the right, which I would guess is the 16 mm of the offset, but I will caliper it… so close.
It could also be that the crosshair offset is not quite right so make sure that’s calibrated first. You can’t assume the factory value is right for your particular unit.
Bottom left, I did with no camera, manual alignment.
Bottom Right was after all steps to realign were completed. User error on centering the image.
Top two were done in one batch after careful centering on the workspace.
I think I’m going to figure out how to trace the coasters and center the images on the traces so I can’t mess up centering the image…
Ran a couple more coasters and noticed the engraving was low and a little left. Reset everything, re-aligned everything, same result. Turned off the laser and moved it top left by hand and noticed that the loomed wiring that controls the laser was getting down in between the top rail and the gantry. The zip ties they give you with the unit don’t seem to hold the wiring on top of the gantry and thus, sometimes may not let you move the laser to 0,0 all the way if they are pinched between the gantry and top rail. Playing around with some ideas on how to re-route the wiring, but that seems to help when you can definitely move the laser to 0,0. The only thing I need to re-check is the get position from now on, before I start from what I believe is 0,0 (absolute coords).
