Hi. I’m currently cutting 20mm thick Plastazote foam on my laser. For this to work, I need to cut multiple 1 mm depth passes, wait around 15 seconds, and launch the next pass. Currently, I do it manually (counting on my fingers between each pass. This is a tedious process). This 15 seconds delay is required to let the foam cool down before the next pass. If not allowed to cool, foam melts and brings extremely bad cuts.
Would it be possible to include a feature in LightBurn that would allow one to set a delay (in seconds) between each pass ?
Many thanks for your comment or questions. Marc/Paris
Might be able to implement this with a streaming controller, like grbl.
The Ruida might be a different animal, as is a fiber controller where Lightburn can’t tell where/what the controller is actually doing at that exact moment…
I don’t know if the Ruida even has any existing way to do this …
We should listen to someone from Lightburn who knows how these works and can advise us what is and isn’t possible…
Maybe, but seems like overkill… A simple software feature would be my best bet to handle this feature neatly. I can even tell you where to place it in the UI !
A potential speculative workaround assuming this is a Line mode layer:
Use the Advanced Tab Start and End Pause Time Cut Through set at 0% power to add a delay. I believe the max time for each field is < 10s. By combining the two fields you may be able to create enough of a delay to get you what you need.
I think you may not be fully appreciating @jkwilborn’s comment. I don’t believe there’s any facility in Ruida controllers to be able to arbitrarily pause like this within a job. It’s not a LightBurn UI problem. It’s a controller capability problem from what I understand.
Thanks for your suggestions [berainlb]. I tried to set Advanced Tab Start and End Pause Time Cut to some seconds, sadly, they only operate at very start, and very end of the layer move, not between passes.
Concerning @jkwilborn’s comment, there’s something I dont’ quite grasp here… why would be delays between passes be linked to any Ruida capability whileother pause settings (eg. Advanced Tab Start and Pause Time Cut) be feasible in software?
I found an alternative solution that works… whereas it is not the most efficient to me.
I create as many sub-layers as the number of passes required (all settings identical), each sub-layer set to one single pass. Then, for each sub-layer, in the Advanced Tab, I set the EndPauseTime to 10.000 ms (10 seconds for my use case). The filed cannot accept higher a number. As I require 20 seconds delay between passes for my use case, I set the StartPauseTime at 10.000 ms as well.
This turnaround make the trick… and - as far as I’m concerned - Ruida is not !
All the best to you all. And thanks for your suggestions. Marc
Generally speaking the Ruida and most dsp type controllers load the complete file before it executes… it has a large memory, so that’s usually not a problem.
In this case, if the Ruida has no internal ability to delay, so there isn’t any way, by software to tell it to pause, anywhere. As far as I know it’s communications is very limited, if it exists at all when it’s actually running a job…
A grbl controller is streamed, with about 3 lines of gcode in it’s internal buffer. You could theoretically stop streaming the data to the controller… The problem with this is that, when it’s running gcode, it doesn’t tell the software that it’s completed and instruction. So there is no way to know when to start the time between layers…
Maybe @berainlb can confirm, grbl machines I use, but haven’t dug into them like he has…
What’s needed it a unique gcode to tell it to pause
Of course this would not help with the Ruida . These are the known opcodes for the Ruida…
Sounds like you have a work around… thanks for posting it…
They are an entity to themselves… but in the end… we have a computer talk to a computer, which talks to another computer to produce the end product…
Anything in the pipeline will effect/control what you can/can’t do…
This is one of the amazing things about Lightburn… it supports a wide range of controllers, some proprietary, like the Ruida and Trocen, to name a couple…
I compare it to a compiler that can support multiple languages… pretty amazing…
The bottom line for most of us … is the joy we get making things with them…
