ive been looking into some lasers recently and im at the point where i know i want a galvo laser but i also want to be able to engrave/cut some larger pieces so i was wondering if lightburn would be able to control a galvo laser thats mounted to a coreXY gantry.
the idea would be that the gantry just moved from one square to the next and the galvo head works its magic in each spare.
That was it would have the speed and precision of the galvo head while also having a large work area.
Sorry, no, LightBurn does not support Galvo lasers mounted to X/Y gantries. Unless it becomes a much more common type of machine, it is not something we’re likely to look into adding support for.
ok thats too bad.
how about having a file loaded in light burn thats too large for the work area of the laser, lets say i have 100 x 100mm to work with and i have a 400 x 400mm file i wanna engrave.
could i manually move either the galvo head or the work piece and engrave this in 4 pieces relatively easily or does it simply refuse to work when it knows the image it too big for the work area of the engraver?
LightBurn only works with Galvo lasers* that have fixed-position scanheads, so unless you had a highly customized setup, to move it would require moving the entire tower that holds it.
You can manually move a workpiece underneath the scanhead, but you will need to divide the graphic you wish to mark onto the workpiece into sections beforehand, and aligning the separate pieces could be a challenge. Cut Shapes would help in dividing your design.
One feature that is on our development roadmap is the addition of Split Marking - that works with a moveable X/Y table, and would automatically split your design into parts, and move a table beneath the scanhead to mark the separate parts on the workpiece.
*Specifically, LightBurn works only with Galvo lasers with EZCad2 or EZCad-lite control boards (and, soon, BSL control boards).
Would that xy table he moved manually or automatically?
Because if it’s automatic it’s essentially the same thing I would want but in reverse.
How I imagine this would be the table moves to one position, the laser goes pew pew and then the table gets gcode commands to move to the next position for some more pew pew.
In that case it shouldn’t really matter if the gcode command is moving the table or the laser head, in both cases it would be one line of gcode followed by the standard galvo laser stuff the software already does and that on repeat till all squares are done.
I built a CNC X table just waiting for this feature. Early experimentation with breaking the image and then moving both the table and image right or left a set distance reveals the degree of accuracy required is of a high order, distance and parallel alignment. Focus has to be spot on and repeatable. It can be done though.
yea precision is going to be critical and thats why my thinking was using a galvo head with a lens that results in a small working area like 110 mm x 110 mm but then cutting the image into 100mm x 100mm sections so i can do fine tuning with the laser itself.
the narrow working area would also result in a very uniform focus of the laser in that area.
beside this if you only move from one section to another you can do the moves relatively slowly and use microstepping for the best possible accuracy.
do you have any details on how you want to implement this yet?
if its simple gcode being send to what ever controller is controlling the movement it should be super simple to make this work universally for both a moving table or a moving laser head.
all lightburn would need to do is tell the controller where to move to with a simple G01 command.
that would make it possible to use virtually any motion system for this purpose provided it has the accuracy required for such a setup.
Prototype table I used for testing. Next one would be a lot longer. Yes, microstepping. Ballscrew setup but probably need to spend more money on the ball screw and and add some quality rails to really be a player.
Running it with Universal G-Code Sender and a Uno board for now. (Also run my motorized Z axis with the UGS) DRO as a backup and make calibration easy.
