I am using Lightburn for a year now and want nothing eslse - it is really great!
I started my Laser addiction with a 60W Mopa, played around with a 40W diode gantry laser (Creality Falcon 2) and now I have a laser welder and cutter (Xlaserlab X1 Pro). They are all great machines for their jobs.
Now I tried combining the Falcon gantry with the Xlaserlab cutter. It needed a bit of thinking and trials but I could make it work. The result is great: It cuts very precisely through 3mm of steel with 25mm/s. There is just one great issue: The Xlaserlab cutter has a delay of about 0.5s from input signal to full fire. So there are always some millimeters uncut at the beginning. I take the gantry laser fire signal for the input to the cutter.
Is there a way to start the laser but delay movement for a certain time?
I am using the Lightburn 1.7.08 (Windows10)
Hi Ednisley!
Thank you very much! That helped a lot. I have set the “start pause” to 500ms with “cut through” enabled and 100% power. It works pretty fine now!
For those who want to use this setup:
Creality Falcon 2, 40W gantry laser
Xlaserlab Pro X1 (700W welder and cutter)
I use the Creality gantry connected to my computer with Lightburn for controlling. I have taken off the original laser head and replaced it by a 3D-printed mount for the Xlaserlab laser pistol.
I have to set the speed in Lightburn (25mm/s). The power is set to 100% (so the pwm-signal from the Creality gantry is clear and processable.
I took the firing signal from the plug for the laser head (very weak 5V on the second pin from the left in the top row, ground from middle pin lower row) and connected it with 220Ohm resistor to an optocoupler. On the other side I have connected it to pin 3 and 4 from the DB25 plug of the Xlaserlab.
The actual cutting power must be set on the Xlaserlab.
That makes a very capable machine!
Thank you for great support!
Martin