Hi y’all, new to the laser ownership/lightburn community. I’ve got a dual head machine (they move together along the x axis) and I can’t get Lightburn to control or fire the second laser (the left side of the bed). I’ve got two laser control enabled in Lightburn, and laser one fires fine (though can only move halfway accross the bed. . . ). If I try to run a test/job, I get a ‘boundary error’ on the Ruida controller (like it doesn’t know it has the second laser. . . )
Is there something I’m missing in terms of what I’m supposed to enable on the machine to take commands from Lightburn for the second laser?
All a bit of a pain, we got this model because we needed the bed size, not because I wanted two parallel lasers. . .
Update after 2 hours on the phone with Customer Support. . . Short answer, there is no good way to do it. Ended up moving the second head next to the first to make it single laser machine. . . Which is ultimately sort of okay. . . though it kills about 10% of my bed space. . .
At LightBurn @NicholasL probably has the most experience with them.
It’s the weekend in his time zone, but he might pop over to say hi.
Would you be willing to snap a pic of the model number on the (Hopefully) Ruida Controller inside the chassis?
I’ll see if I can download a manual from the Manufacturer of the controller.
Thanks for the response! I can do that when I get back to the shop (probably Monday) The issue that tech support brought up, is that because of the way the OMTech 2-head machines are configured, to cut a single image accross the whole bed using both lasers you’d have to treat each half of the bed as an individual cut job. Essentially, he was saying that there’s no way to just separate halves in layers with one head on one layer and one head on the other. . . that essentially I’d have to trick the machine into cutting the left side of the bed as a mirror/duplicate of cutting the right side and then set the right side to a power setting where it just doesn’t fire. . . I mean if there’s a work-around that someone knows about, awesome. . . but for now, moving the number 2 head over and getting 46" of travel instead of 51" seems like it’ll get me through most of our projects.
Then (if it were me) I’d remove as much of the second laser head as possible, perhaps even disconnect the belt from the carriage and move the carriage as far out of the way as you can since it only adds extra weight and drag. I would also disconnect the A/C power to the PSU for that tube to be certain it could never fire.
If you decide later that you would like your second laser working:
In Edit > Machine Settings, enable ‘Multi-Tube’ and ‘Laser 2’ - and make sure all other Laser 2 settings are correct.
If you have any controls at your machine to manually disable/enable each separate laser source or a knob for overriding power levels, make sure they are on and dialled up.
If you find that the 2nd laser is still not firing, you may need to try performing a test fire directly from the power supply. Since I expect you do not know if the mirrors are aligned for that tube it would be safer to put something that will mark (but not immediately catch on fire) between the end of the tube and the first mirror for this test.
This is what worked for me last time I set up a dual head machine from a Ruida controller:
In Edit > Machine settings, reduce the max travel on X axis by roughly half (which it seems like somebody has already done at your machine) so it is impossible to crash the second laser head, which is positioned about halfway along the axis to serve the other half of the workbed.
In LightBurn > Edit > Device Settings you will set the ‘Working Size’ of your device to match the reduced width, and ‘Enable Laser 2 Controls’, but toggle off ‘Enable Laser 2 Offset’.
If everything is correct, when you enable laser 2 in LightBurn the second laser will fire, and you should not get any boundary errors.
You can separate jobs in layers with one head on one layer and another head to run the other, just by enabling only the laser you want for that layer. But you would have to split your artwork and put each half in separate layers.
For example - you could run the right side first in black layer with only laser 1 enabled, then the left side from a blue layer which has only laser 2 enabled.
You could even potentially cut each half on separate layers so they meet in the middle to make a whole job (for simple cutting only) but extra travel movements would be required and the halves would never meet as perfectly as you would like - so not worth the hassle!
We had everything aligned and dialed in on both lasers before we attempted any work at all (but appreciate the methodical approach). Some combination of your suggestions and late night thinking when I should’ve been asleep led to a partial solution. I created two different files as if I were running a print and cut with the left section of the image moved the distance of the physical laser offset on the file (and no offset in the settings) and then just ran it with laser one turned to 1% (won’t run if it’s not enabled, but won’t fire if it’s below 10%). It worked reasonably well (not ideal but not atrocious. . . you can see the meet point along the 'center’line). I think I’ll just use it as one laser machine until I need to get wider than 45" and then I can spend half an hour dialing in perfect offsets. . .
