Confusion regarding sudden stoppage and setting work area size with lightburn

[madswede (S Nils)]

First time user of any CNC/Laser setup or Lightburn.

I have been gifted a Comgrow Z1 10w laser setup with a mecpow cutting table and air assist and filtration.

I have it setup and powered on and initially set the working size to 40mm x 40mm based on the markings on the side of the Comgrow profile and X Axis. I was able to do a successful etch of a provided stock image to a piece of wood yesterday but continued to get the " cut might be out of bounds " repeatedly despite reading and searching on how to resolve that, I was unsuccessful with that with Lighburn.

I’ve modified the working size to be 400mm x 400mm which is the correct dimensions based off of what Comgrow has listed in their marketing and sales writeup. Doing that, I assumed that would fix the out of bounds issue with Lightburn, it did not.

I then did another etch of a provided stock image and got the following error below along with the same " cut might be out of bounds " prior to going forward. I also framed out the dimensions before I went forward. The laser did not go off the material to be etched so I’m confused on that as well.

The second error occurred towards the end of the etching process, shown below

.

I honestly can’t make any sense of it ( granted I know this is a very long uphill process of learning something new here )

I do not see any physical limit switch being hit at all. The micro switch on the lower right side of the Comgrow unit isn’t triggered and the laser will home back when instructed to via the software. There wasn’t any faulty connection, I am using the provided USB cable and the connections are tight and not loose. Nothing lost power either, the unit just stopped and threw this error below.

Layer C00
ALARM:1
Hard limit triggered. Machine position is likely lost due to sudden and immediate halt. Re-homing is highly recommended.
On or near line 35107:
Job halted
Stream completed in 7:34
[MSG:Reset to continue]
ok
Grbl 1.1f ['$' for help]

The Mac Pro I am using is admittedly very old, it’s a 2010 High Sierra 10.13.6 with 16gb ram, I don’t think that would be an issue but if it is I have a 12 core xeon Mac Pro 5,1 with 128gb of ram I could try instead.

I am also using the trial of lightburn ( I have a license but did not want to use it just yet till I proved out the current Mac I have could handle it )

The version of Lightburn I am using is:
LightBurn 1.4.05, built Wed 2023-08-02 @ 15:08
Thanks for your time!

[Dskall (D Kallenberger)]

Try moving your project away from the corner.

[madswede (S Nils)]

I’m doing that right now. Is the thought that the material and engraving file may have brought the X axis close enough to have triggered something in the software?

[Dskall (D Kallenberger)]

You probably have overscan on in cuts/layers.

[madswede (S Nils)]

Moving the piece fixed the issue. Thank you for that suggestion. As someone new to this I’ve got to look up what you mentioned about the overscan in the layers to make sense of that.

[Dskall (D Kallenberger)]

In fill mode overscan helps to even out burn because it runs past the area and gives laser a chance to slow, stop and change directions outside of burn area. Otherwise it can cause dark edges.
[Fill Mode - LightBurn Software Documentation](Fill Mode - LightBurn Software Documentation

[madswede (S Nils)]

Thank you for the breakdown and the link to the docs!

[Wyked (Chris Gallaher)]

While learning I found it helpful to go to the preview window (TV like icon) and turn on Show transversal moves, so you can then see where the Red transversal (laser module movement) lines cross the (faint) line that represents your work area, from that you can see what parts of the job need slowing down or how far away from the edge you need to move your job.

[madswede (S Nils)]

Looks like I’m not out of the woods with this error.

Presently I have been moving my work towards the middle of the board. Far enough away from the left edge and bottom right microswitch.

I have done a few burns after this initial post with the suggestions of moving the workpiece away from the side and that did work until today I tried again and got the following on a layer I created.

“Hard limit triggered. Machine position is likely lost due to sudden and immediate halt. Re-homing is highly recommended.”

I’ve set the working size of my cutting table to be 400mm x 400mm and the art when framed is well within the area I’m cutting. So I’m stumped on this one. Every time I try to run layer 13 on it’s own, the laser Y axis returns to home and throws the same error?

Would having lightburn open then re-connecting the laser to it via usb cause this issue?

I opted to power down the laser, and restart the lightburn software and now I can burn layer 13. Is the best practice now to always restart Lightburn after use? I ask cause I don’t want to botch future jobs that are more elaborate.

[Wyked (Chris Gallaher)]

Hard limit triggered is an unrelated error, if the module was not near the sides, it was most likely cause by electrical interference or a loose wire.