Change the path of the laser

LightBurn Software Questions
1

Hi there, I am working with a paid version of lightburn 1.4.03. The thing that i want to do is to change the path of my laser towards every laserpiece. This because the pieces i need to laser are higher then the laserhead. This means if the laser does it’s own thing it will crash into the higher pieces of the work. So i want to manually set the route that the laserhead should go to laser all the pieces. I need to laser 5000 units, so i cannot do this by hand…i need to set this up for 1 sheet and then it can replicate.

Hope someone can help me…i even asked chatgpt and he/she sais it can be done but i cannot find the given solution in my version of lightburn.

2

Can you elaborate on how this works? Are you expecting to dynamically change the focus height?

How much precision in the path do you need? You won’t be able to directly control traversal moves. The best case is you should be able to control shape by shape order.

How many shapes would you have in a single job?

3

How will this work? You adjust the laser head such that it sits correctly in relation to the work pieces. Not to the bed. So you should not need to change the head’s height at any time. Except each piece has a different height…

4

No the laserhead wil always stay at the same hight, but my work is like a small tower…but at the foot of the tower there is a small round plat where I need a hole in. I need to do do 15pcs per run.

I hope this makes it a bit clear…

Iwan

5

I don’t see a practical way of doing this since you won’t have great control of traversal moves.

If you were well motivated I can think of some elaborate workarounds.

General strategy:

  1. Use “Cut Order Priority” in Shape Properties to assign every distinct shape a manual cut order
  2. In Optimization Settings in Laser window set Order Priority to “Order by Priority”

This should effectively get you the manual control of order shape by shape.

Extreme work-around strategy:
I assume you need to control the path of the traversal moves to avoid running into your material.

  1. Create dummy target shapes that are strategically positioned as locations providing a clear path of travel
  2. Assign those dummy shape to a layer set with 0% power so that they don’t actually burn but are considered for the job
  3. Add “Cut Order Priority” values such that between actual cut shapes that you are able to control the path of travel

I’d also highly suggest you create a jig so that you can swap in new material without having to reposition each time.

I think this should work but have not proven it out.

6

If you can get the clearance, build a fixture that holds them upside down. then you have no clearance or excessive motion issues.

7

Thanks for the input as I need to go this direction indeed.
I will make a picture tommorow so it is very clear on what I mean.

8

This is not possible as the shape also has a depth thing on the bottom.

Iwan

9

Yeah, that could be a problem.

10

Here a picture on the objects I need to laser.

IMG_20231123_072957
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IMG_20231123_072948
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I hope this makes some things clear…so I need to work around these objects.

11

I guess the easiest would be to use the options PY described. But if you have so many objects, is it reasonable to change the optics to have a much longer focal distance? I don’t have any experience with CO2, but I noticed that you can exchange lenses to get different focal distances and lengths. So that might be even easier.

12

I would also suggest looking at this option. Would potentially eliminate having to do all the elaborate setup if you could just clear the height of the pieces.

13

Thanks PY,

I did it your way…and it looks good…bit more work, but if this works…I am happy…am going to test it now…

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14

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