I have a dual head laser with two independent heads on the same gantry, 130W CO2 tubes and a Ruida 6442 controller. We just finished setting it up and both lasers fire when hitting the pulse button.
However, there are some issues that we can’t figure out:
Although both lasers fire when hitting Pulse, only Laser 1 fires when sending a job from Lightburn. I already enabled “Laser 2 controls” and “Laser 2 Offset” in the device settings menu, ensured both lasers were enabled in the vendor settings, and turned both lasers on in the layer settings.
Autofocus is not working - the bed moves up and down when moved via both the control panel and using Lighburn, and the focusing probes work when selecting Axes Reset (bed moves up, hits the probe, and moves back down a fixed amount). However the autofocus button does not do anything.
2.1. Z/U axes - by default, the second laser head’s x-axis movement has been assigned as the “z-axis”, and the vertical axis of the bed has been assigned as the “U-axis” in the Ruida controller. Would this pose a problem in terms of the autofocus functionality?
I don’t have one of these animals, but I do ok with the Ruida. Since it fires from the consoles ‘pulse’ button I would have to conclude the controllers hardware is probably ok and I’d look closer at how to enable the second laser.
Configuration is probably off somewhere.
You can measure the L input of the ‘faulty’ laser and see if it’s being enabled or not. No need for the lps to be up and running, so you can cut a couple of boxes or something. Measure the L input, it’s active low. That will confirm the controller isn’t doing what you want ‘software’ wise. I’d assume this since the pulse works.
Follow? If you have a problem doing this, it isn’t required. We can probably assume that’s it’s configuration or Ruida or Lightburn.
It isn’t logical to me to assign the Z axes to the U axes of the controller when it’s got an axes designed to deal with the Z specifically, at least in my mind. If it’s got special software for an auto focus, it probably doesn’t recognize U as the same as the Z. This could effect your autofocus operation I would think.
Maybe someone with a similar machine can give you better feedback…
