Camera setup clarification

[ideaforge (Jody Horton)]

I’ve been using my laser for 9 months, having great success in my business venture and lasering the bejeesus out of every thing I put my grubby hands on.

One thing I have never sorted is the camera option. I installed the camera, did all the alignments and setups and went through the procedures 10 or 15 times…all to the same end. My camera is never accurate enough to align my items in the preview mode and only gives a rough estimate of where the laser will land.

I eventually gave up and just operated without the camera.

This week I had a thought…maybe I was doing it wrong all along. Admittedly, I am an idiot so if my question is stupid please don’t spare my feelings.

I mounted the camera in the center of the glass on the door of my Boss LS1420, pointing down at the bed. All this time I have been attempting to align my engravings with the door open. Now it occurs to me that I should try it by closing the door.

Yeah or nay?

[sensor (Björn Ruber)]

Hey Jody,

I have my camera mounted on two machines on the front of the lid.
So when the lid is open, the camera points down.

On one machine it is quite accurate, on the other I can’t get it to be that accurate. I mainly blame the fact that when the lid is open it wiggles.
Also after aligning you should always use the camera at the same distance from the top of the cutting material to get the best alignment.
So if you take a snapshot and then move the Z-axis, the results are less accurate.