Good Day!
I am struggling with my new Foxalien Masuter Pro Router, which I want to use for laser engraving (Milling will be later with Millmage).
I have set Home to front left ($23=0) and I had to set the Axis moves to $3=3 so that they would move the right direction when using move console or keyboard (4-6-2-8 on number block). With that setting it looks fine and the Laser follows when I set position with the mouse. But when I enable soft limits ($20=1) it does not move away from home. Apparently the coordinates are inverted. When I prompt G0 X-100 Y-100 it movers towards working area. So it looks that I am in the wrong quadrant (-/-) instead of (+/+).
I could probably work without soft limits but Iād like to have all correctly set (Home front left, correct moves and soft limits enabled.
Anyone knows help?
Thank you!
MArtin
Welcome to the world of Coordinate Chaos!
- Where does your machine Home, in which corner?
- What are in the X & Y displays when you click the Move window Get Position button while at the Home position?
- In the Lightburn Grid, which corner has the 0,0 position (small green square)?
Yes, you are right about the quadrant.
$3 and $23 only set direction travel. We may have to make corrections to those once we get you in the proper quadrant. This might tale some back and forth dialog for a bit. Once we get it sorted out, $20 will work for you. 
Ohā¦ Assume I cannot see your machine so you must be detailed and exact.
Since you are also intending to use Millmage, Iād recommend you not bother with trying to turn the coordinates inside out for LightBurn. Keep the natural setting for your negative coordinate machine - which is device origin to back right corner and enable āCNC Machineā to invert the axis and allow LightBurn to work with the negative coordinates (then hopefully that would allow the soft limits to work).
The machine homes in the left front corner as I wish. There is also the green square. I am not at the machine over the weekend, so I donāt know the X and Y coordinates (where would I find them - been looking for them). The red cross (last position) is shown in the correct place.
I thought I make a good setup in lightburn as I am working with it for more than one year. Then I wanted to transfer the setup to Millmage and get into the mill world (I have done some milling with a colleague with linuxCNC). I wanted to use both programs depending whether I mill or laser cut. Is the setup in Millmage that different?
Yes, the difference between burning and removing material. You can copy project designs back and forth between Lightburn and MillMage, but running them is a completely different game.
I am aware that the processes between laser cutting, 3D-printing and milling are different. Though they could be made with the same machine with different heads and different output signals and sometimes several actors (extruder, fan, air assist, heatbed,ā¦).
I wanted to ask if the machine settings for Lightburn and Millmage are so different since I need just on/off output to activate the external Laser cutting head and for milling I donāt even need that (just switch on the spindle by hand before milling). The X Y Z moves and limits are the same.
The suggestion from NicholasL was to live with the home in the back right corner for use in laser mode with LightBurn. In my workshop front left home would be more handy for both laser and mill.
So I wonder: Would it be so much easier in Millmage to set home to left front corner and have correct axis moves and soft limits? Or will I face the same problems then? So Iād rather work it out in the program I know better and transfer the settings. As Millmage is from the same developers why should it be different?
I follow what you are saying, but I am not seeing what you mean by ādifferentā. What is it that you have a question about?
Changing those LightBurn settings I suggested shouldnt change the current homing behaviour of the machine.
I believe your particular firmware will set the workspace to negative coordinates regardless of where the home corner is. This means that if you enable softlimits (which will be from 0 to negative (max travel)) the machine will not allow positive coordinates.
How I think your system currently works:
You could just disable the machine soft limits as LightBurn has itās own soft limit system.
However, my thoughts were that if you were intending to later use MillMage, that it might be better not to overly manipulate the GRBL settings since MillMage will make more use of machine coordinates than LightBurn, so it would be more important for the logical to match the physical.
Thank you!
I was just about to point out my thoughts - you gave the answer that I missed.
And thanks for the great support in general!
ā¦it can be a real head scratcher since there are multiple places and layers where settings change everything - it reminds me of this joke, but replace āCSSā with āGRBLā and put the text completely outside the box, upside down and back to front!